Trump Says Climate Repeal Saves $1.3 Trillion. The EPA’s Math Differs
The agency’s own cost-benefit assessment for revoking the endangerment finding points to steep costs that may outweigh the savings.
US President Donald Trump, left, and Lee Zeldin, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, at the White House on Feb. 12, 2026, to announce the rescinding of the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health.
Photographer: Will Oliver/EPAWhen President Donald Trump on Feb. 12 announced the “single largest deregulation in American history” — the repeal of climate emissions standards for all vehicles and the key scientific determination underpinning them, in one swoop — he said it would save Americans $1.3 trillion.
But the administration’s own analyses, found in the official rulemaking published Wednesday in the Federal Register, show a more nuanced picture. The climate rollbacks also come with costs, ranging from hundreds of billions of dollars on the low end to more than $1.4 trillion on the high end — an amount that exceeds the projected savings.