California’s Tire Tyranny: Newsom’s Latest Tour de Force in How to Make Everything Worse

Governor Gavin Newsom’s California has perfected a special skill: taking ordinary life and making it more expensive, less reliable, and more bureaucratic—all in the name of climate virtue. The latest exhibit is the California Energy Commission’s unanimous approval of the nation’s first efficiency standards for replacement tires. These rules, effective in phases starting in 2029 and tightening in 2033, target “rolling resistance.” The result? Roughly 70% of tires currently available to California drivers could effectively be banned from the market.

The California Energy Commission consists of five members appointed by Newsom. They claim lower rolling resistance will save drivers nearly $1 billion a year in fuel or electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions by 2 million metric tons annually—equivalent, they say, to taking about 400,000 gasoline cars off the road. Official estimates put the added cost at a modest $1.50 to $6.50 per tire, with quick payback through better mileage.

Industry groups, including the Tire Industry Association and Goodyear, paint a very different picture. Average tire prices could jump from about $81 to as high as $157. A full set of four could cost drivers more than $300 extra. Affordable options that ordinary families rely on for commuting, school runs, and errands will disappear. Consumers face fewer choices and higher prices in a state already crushing them with the nation’s highest costs of living.

As the New York Post noted in coverage and opinion pieces, this decision by unelected bureaucrats further squeezes family budgets. Working families needing four new tires face immediate costs they cannot defer for projected future savings that often fail to materialize in the real world. Higher prices encourage people to delay replacements, keep worn tires longer, or buy used ones—reducing traction, lengthening stopping distances, and increasing the risk of blowouts and accidents. Safety suffers while Sacramento lectures about long-term benefits.

Newsom’s office has touted the rules as a win for affordability, with rhetoric about how “MAGA hates to see it.” Critics, including former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, call it part of a deliberate positive-feedback loop: inflate the cost of driving gas cars through taxes and regulations, then pile on more mandates. The state still refuses to meaningfully cut its self-imposed gas taxes and special blend requirements that keep pump prices elevated.

This tire mandate is not an isolated overreach. It fits the pattern of Newsom’s aggressive net-zero and climate policies that have driven California’s energy prices to among the highest in the United States. Residential electricity rates hover around 33 cents per kWh—roughly 80% above the national average of about 18 cents—while commercial and industrial rates rank at or near the top. Rate increases for major utilities have far outpaced inflation over the past decade.

Gasoline and diesel prices routinely lead the nation. Californians pay a substantial “California premium” from the highest state taxes and fees (often exceeding 60–70 cents per gallon in excise alone, plus sales taxes and local add-ons), special low-carbon fuel blends, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), and the cap-and-trade (now “cap-and-invest”) program. These carbon emission costs alone can add 40–50+ cents per gallon depending on the period. The state functions as a “fuel island,” largely isolated from the rest of the U.S. refined products market and increasingly dependent on costly imports, including from Asia.

Energy News Beat has extensively covered how these policies under Newsom have produced some of the highest energy, gas, and diesel prices in the country precisely because of carbon emission taxes and related mandates. The pursuit of net-zero goals, 100% clean electricity by 2045, and the phaseout of gasoline vehicles has accelerated the decline of in-state refining. California once had dozens of refineries; numbers have fallen dramatically. Recent closures of the Phillips 66 Los Angeles/Wilmington complex and the Valero Benicia refinery removed roughly 18–20% of the state’s refining capacity in short order. Remaining gasoline-producing facilities number in the single digits (around 7–8 after the latest idlings).

Industry warnings and Energy News Beat reporting highlight the growing risk: further regulatory pressure, high compliance costs, and signals that long-term fossil demand will collapse could push additional closures. Losing a large share of the remaining capacity would create a severe energy security situation—greater volatility, deeper import dependence (already elevated and exposed to global disruptions such as Middle East conflicts), potential shortages, and even higher prices for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. California already imports significant volumes of refined products; more closures would intensify that vulnerability while demand for transportation fuels remains substantial for years to come.

Newsom’s administration has responded with a mix of collaboration with remaining refiners on imports, temporary delays of certain profit-cap rules, limited permitting relief in places like Kern County, and plans for pipelines to bring in out-of-state supply. Yet the underlying policies—cap-and-trade extensions, LCFS, vehicle mandates, and hostility to new fossil infrastructure—continue to discourage investment and accelerate the exit of refining capacity. The result is a state that lectures the world on climate leadership while its residents pay premium prices for less secure energy and now face mandates that raise the cost of keeping cars on the road.

The tire rules are merely the newest chapter. Mandate by mandate, tax by tax, California under Newsom demonstrates how to turn environmental ambition into higher costs, reduced choices, safety trade-offs, and energy insecurity. Families balance real budgets today. Sacramento balances projections of future savings and emissions reductions. The gap between those two realities keeps widening—and ordinary Californians keep paying the price.

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