President Trump’s onslaught against California’s environmental policies is emboldening big truck makers to turn away from a landmark clean air deal that they struck with the state.
The deal required the truck makers to obey two clean air rules even if the rules were later challenged. In return for that commitment, California significantly softened one of the rules, which requires the sale of cleaner diesel trucks.
The truck makers now say Mr. Trump’s actions have undermined the pact and taken away California’s right to impose the regulations.
Their brewing fight with the state shows how California is struggling to impose policies to cut down emissions as the Trump administration works to reverse those efforts.
The regulation requiring the sale of cleaner diesel trucks seeks to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides, which have been linked to respiratory diseases. The other rule demands that the truck makers sell an increasing number of battery-powered trucks, which don’t emit carbon. The manufacturers say a lack of demand for zero-emissions semis makes the rule unworkable. Battery-powered trucks cost far more than those with diesel engines, and operators say the distance they can travel before they need a charge is too short.
California said it expected the truck makers to stand by the deal, struck two years ago and called the Clean Truck Partnership.
“The Clean Truck Partnership is an agreement that works for the industry and reduces harmful emissions,” said Lynda Lambert, a spokeswoman for the California Air Resources Board, the agency that wrote the rules and negotiated the pact. “CARB is standing by its commitments and expects the other parties to do the same,” she added.
The pact stipulates that the truck makers must follow the rules if the rules become the target of litigation. And if California’s authority to impose them is challenged, they still need to be obeyed.
That challenge came this year when President Trump and Congress rescinded the state’s authority to apply the rules. But instead of affirming a commitment to the agreement, the truck makers told California last month that they had serious doubts about it.
The Clean Air Act allows the federal government to grant waivers to California to impose stricter air regulations. But those regulations can be overturned.
Even though some of the truck makers voiced support for the agreement when they signed it, the industry quickly took a dim view of it after the Trump administration revoked the waivers for several of California’s clean air regulations in June. In letters to California, Daimler Truck and the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, an industry group, said taking away the waivers undercut the overall Clean Truck Partnership.
But Craig Segall, a former senior lawyer at the California Air Resources Board, said the deal had been written in a way that anticipated the revocation of waivers, and was strong enough to protect the rules against Mr. Trump’s onslaught.
“This is very much what it is for,” said Mr. Segall, who left the board shortly before the agreement was signed. “It’s attempting to map a path forward in California, no matter what happens federally.”
Overturning waivers typically takes many months, but this year the Republican-led Congress — using a law that allows it to rescind federal rules — did so much more quickly, prompting fury among Democrats.
The rollback by Mr. Trump and lawmakers undermined the “viability and effect” of the overall agreement, Daimler Truck North America and the industry group said in the letters to the California Air Resources Board.
Diesel rigs are a big source of pollution in California, according to the board, and they clog the streets in neighborhoods near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Environmental groups criticized the truck makers for questioning the validity of the agreement.
“Backing out of the Clean Truck Partnership is a betrayal of public health, small businesses and the future of American trucking,” said Guillermo Ortiz, a senior advocate for clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement.
It is not clear whether the truck makers will abandon the agreement, a move that could damage their relations with California, or are seeking to exploit the situation to loosen the rules.
Daimler Truck declined to say whether it would comply with the rule requiring that it sell more electric trucks, but it said it was “prepared to meet” the nitrogen oxides regulation.
The wording of this part of the agreement could prove divisive.
The truck makers had said they would comply “regardless of the outcome of any litigation challenging the waivers/authorizations for those regulations, or CARB’s overall authority to implement those regulations.”
Daimler Truck, which makes Freightliner rigs and Western Star trucks, said in its letter to California that an act of Congress, not litigation, had led to the revocation of the truck rule waivers. That, the company contended, undermined the agreement.
But Mr. Segall noted that the agreement didn’t mention just challenges from litigation. It says the rules must go forward even if California’s authority to apply them changes. “You don’t really need to invoke CARB’s overall authority if you’re only talking about litigation,” he said.
California has provided significant grants to help truck companies afford the higher-priced battery-powered trucks. Even so, the companies say they are not selling many, making it hard to comply with the rule that demands that they sell an increasing amount of zero-emissions vehicles each year. The state is requiring that zero-emissions vehicles make up 40 percent of sales of the largest class of trucks a decade from now.
That goal would, however, seem to be within the scope of Daimler Truck’s clean truck ambitions. From 2039 on, the company aims to offer only zero-emissions vehicles in Europe, Japan and the United States.
Asked why it was pushing back when California’s electric truck rule seemed to align with its own goals, Daimler Truck pointed to difficulties, like a lack of truck charging infrastructure, that were hampering the takeup of electric or hydrogen-powered trucks.
“If high-performance diesel vehicles remain more cost-effective over their life cycle and infrastructure challenges for battery-electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles remain, many customers will continue choosing them to meet their operational needs,” the company said in a statement.
California effectively withdrew a rule this year that compelled truckers to buy an increasing number of zero-emission, heavy-duty vehicles.