I’m from the government and I’m here to help with a brilliant idea. Let’s force auto makers to cut the consumption of fuel by making paper-thin cars at a painful cost to consumers, thereby lowering the amount of gasoline consumed by motorists every year. At the same time, I have another brilliant idea to force oil refiners to blend insane amounts of less efficient ethanol into the nation’s gasoline supply. Oh, guess what: The first brilliant idea ensured that there wasn’t enough gasoline being consumed to meet the demands of the ethanol blend mandate. That, in a nutshell, is what our government has done since 2007.

Trump had an opportunity to roll back, in part, both of these swamp ideas, but it appears that the swamp is winning on both counts. Is it any wonder our economy is so inefficient that even with record job growth, GDP is growing by less than two percent?

In order to serve the gods of the climate and limit the use of fossil fuels, Congress dramatically expanded the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards in 2007, forcing auto manufacturers to make expensive cars with paper-thin steel in order to comply with the green energy agenda and increase their mileage per gallon (mpg) from 27.5 to 35. This was part of Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the same bill that expanded the ethanol mandate, which would later run into problems with the CAFE standards. Just like with the ethanol mandate, the EPA has created trading credits where manufacturers can buy credits from competitors in exchange for not complying with the standard.