Sean Duffy starred on ‘The Real World,’ but he doesn’t live in it
Trump’s new Transportation Secretary is already gaslighting the American public about emissions standards.
In our current timeline, where “reality star” now qualifies folks for the highest office in the land, our newly sworn-in Transportation Secretary ticks the box. Sean Duffy first appeared in our living rooms almost 30 years ago on MTV’s The Real World: Boston as the “conservative guy,” a typical trope in those early seasons of the groundbreaking series. He dreamed of being a lawyer and competed in lumberjack competitions.
For readers under age 40, I cannot overemphasize the cultural weight of The Real World in the 1990s. It was an artificial construct, no doubt, but there was something staggeringly enlightening about seeing strangers, picked to live in a house, have their lives taped, and share their own experiences and values in ways that just weren’t happening organically at that time. My hope was always that the right-of-center folks like Sean would emerge from the experience changed, evolved. (Remember Julie from Season 1?)
Instead, Duffy fell in love with another conservative cast member — Real World: San Francisco alum Rachel Campos — and they raised nine children together as Duffy became an attorney general in Wisconsin before being elected to the U.S. House and serving for 9 years. I could bemoan Duffy’s record on the Hill, which included supporting Trump’s Muslim ban and voting to gut regulations for wages paid to workers executing federal projects. I could also say that he really did a whole lot of nothing while in office.
Now, as Transportation Secretary, what he’s doing is gaslighting the American people. On his first day on the job, Duffy took his lumberjack hatchet to Biden-era emission standards in order to, in his words, reduce “the burdensome and overly restrictive fuel standards that have needlessly driven up the cost of a car in order to push a radical Green New Deal agenda,” following the campaign trail rhetoric of his fellow unscripted TV alum, Donald Trump.
Time to stop being polite and start getting real, Sean. That is bullshit.
Duffy’s Department of Transportation press release claims the “[c]urrent rule requires all passenger cars and light trucks to meet a standard of 50.4 miles per gallon (mpg) in Model Year 2031. This government mandate has dramatically increased the average price of a new car to nearly $48,000, driving up the cost and making it unaffordable for American consumers.”
The emissions regulations Duffy lambasts are known as the CAFE standards. “CAFE” stands for “corporate average fuel efficiency standards” — let me highlight the word “average.” Each automaker is meant to reach an average of 50.4 MPG across their entire fleet of vehicles, so that includes everything from their bulky SUVs and trucks to their leanest, sleekest EVs. Add up every vehicle’s MPG, divide by number of vehicles. Reading Sean’s bogus screed, you’d think the government was forcing automakers to magically deliver Toyota Prius-level efficiency in every vehicle within six years. That is not how it works.
Reading Sean’s bogus screed, you’d think the government was forcing automakers to magically deliver Toyota Prius-level efficiency in every vehicle within six years.
Next, Duffy accurately points out that the cost of a new car has skyrocketed over the past few years, “from an average of $40,881 to an average of $47,218” according to Cox Automotive, and only eight new vehicles start below $25,000 vs. 20 in 2021. I wholeheartedly agree this is a major issue that needs to be addressed. But the quest to make cars more efficient is just a small factor driving those price increases.
We cannot have a real conversation about rising sticker prices without talking about the semiconductor shortages, labor stoppages, and supply chain issues, that sprung out of the Covid-19 pandemic years. Automakers couldn’t make as many cars, and that drove up demand for new cars as well as used cars, which had a wild market during the pandemic. We’re still recovering from those massive problems and now we’re likely to see costs soar as Trump’s tariffs are likely to make many components of cars even more expensive to import.
Those matters in the Covid years were beyond the automakers’ control. What they do control is deciding what cars to build and how many, and as long as Americans continue to prefer crossovers, SUVs, and pickups, which are naturally more expensive (and drive bigger profit margins and are naturally less fuel efficient due to their size), then that’s what’ll appear in showrooms. And, when a model is particularly popular, like a Kia Telluride or Jeep Wrangler, the dealers slap additional premiums on top of the sticker price.
In many parts of the world, buyers demand cheap, cheerful cars and actually buy them. I fell in love with Fiat’s new Grande Panda this week, which comes in both gas-hybrid and full EV versions, and folks are raving about the Renault 5, even reviewers who are skeptical about electric mobility. Both are pretty close to Duffy’s price target — and they’re EVs! But they’re not coming here. So how are American buyers finding affordable cars, then? Since they don’t want small, cheap new cars, they’re buying used crossovers, SUVs, and trucks — eight of the top 10 selling used cars in this country are trucks and SUVs. That’s how our market has organically played out.
You know by now that these bogus rationales for loose emissions standards have nothing to do with making cars more affordable. You might be unsurprised to learn that, after he left Congress, Duffy went to work as a lobbyist repping oil and gas pipeline giant Enterprise Products, among other clients, while also becoming a Fox News pundit, routinely taking aim at now-former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Duffy’s DOT is all about making sure Americans remain dependent on fossil fuels for as long as possible, continuing to line the pockets of the oil industry while posing a health risk to ourselves and our families, as I’ve written about in detail.
It’s also going to make driving more expensive. The more efficient our cars become, the more money we save. And while hybrids can be a bit more expensive than regular gas cars, drivers make back the cost difference and then some over the course of ownership by reduced fuel costs at the pump — and that’s not even getting into the immense cost savings of EV ownership.
Sadly, as long as sycophants like Sean the Pawn are wielding power, we need to create demand for efficient vehicles on our own, not just because it’ll save everyone money, but because it’ll help save our planet, and that’s the only version of The Real World that matters to me.