Supporters of fuel-economy standards, however, counter with a political feasibility argument.
They point out that in the United States, sufficiently high gasoline taxes to produce that level of reduction could never have passed Congress, so the fuel-economy standards were better, indeed much better, than no policy at all.
Indeed the $0.30 increase estimated by Austin and Dinan represented a 73 percent increase in the tax on gasoline in the United States.