Small Businesses Call on Congress to Stop California’s ICE Vehicle Ban Regulation

Citing the dire impact of California’s intended ban of internal combustion engine vehicles, a coalition of 335 small businesses, comprised of members of the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), has urged U.S. House of Representatives and Senate leadership to put an immediate stop to the implementation of the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) regulation, according to a press release from SEMA officials.

• ACC II is currently subject to Congressional Review Act oversight due to the significant disruptions it would cause for the nation’s economy and the $337 billion annual economic impact of the automotive aftermarket industry. Congress has a short window to respond to the transmission of the regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency.

In the SEMA-led letter to Republican leadership in the House and Senate, small business owners stressed the importance of swift, definitive action to schedule a vote to overturn California’s regulatory land grab, which will limit vehicle choice for nearly 40% of American consumers. Here is an excerpt from the letter:

“Congress is owed the opportunity to decide on the appropriateness of waivers granted in the waning days of the lame-duck Biden administration, just weeks after the American people resoundingly voted against candidates who favor EV mandates.

“Congress is owed the opportunity to determine whether a single state should be empowered to enact a heavy-handed policy that requires 100% of new cars, SUVs, and small trucks sold in California and 11 other states to be zero-emissions vehicles (ZEV) by 2035.

“And Congress is owed the opportunity to determine if a single state is allowed to eschew a tradition of American innovation and ingenuity in favor of a flawed technology that the American people don’t want, that our businesses can’t use, and that our economy can’t sustain.”

You can read the full letter here.

“This is a classic ‘who decides?’ question,” said Karen Bailey-Chapman, SEMA’s senior vice president for public and government affairs. “We’ve seen a cavalcade of unelected bureaucrats trying to say that voters and their elected representatives can’t be trusted to make such decisions. But the decision about whether to ban the internal combustion engine doesn’t lie in Sacramento, or in the halls of the so-called ‘Government Accountability Office,’ or with an unelected parliamentarian, but with Congress itself.

“It’s time for Congress to exercise its lawful prerogative under the Congressional Review Act to stop the nonsense and let the will of voters be heard, to finally end California’s regulatory land grab over national automotive policy. This is a critical moment, and the American automotive aftermarket stands ready to develop innovative solutions to carbon emissions using American ingenuity.”

SEMA and the EV Market

SEMA states that the organization and the specialty automotive aftermarket industry are not anti-EV; rather, they champion a technology-neutral approach that fosters innovation and ingenuity. SEMA will continue efforts to preserve Americans’ rights to vehicle choice and the automotive aftermarket industry’s ability to design, manufacture, and bring to market products that help solve the emissions challenge.

California’s ICE vehicle ban through EV mandates would represent a significant hit to the nation’s economy by causing irreparable harm to an industry that annually delivers a $337 billion economic impact and supports more than 1.3 million American jobs through domestic manufacturing and sales, the press release noted.

• 33% of the nation’s automotive aftermarket industry is ICE-dependent, representing over $100 billion in economic impact to the U.S. economy, and impacts roughly 330,000 jobs.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, SEMA, through its Driving Force Action SuperPAC, said that it educated voters about the damaging impact of EV mandates and the profound importance of empowering the automotive aftermarket to develop innovative solutions to carbon emissions using American ingenuity.