The Trump administration has finally come out with its proposal to reverse Obama-era regulations on vehicle emissions. This is welcome, for current standards make cars unnecessarily expensive and limit choices while producing scant environmental benefit.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which jointly administer the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) program, unveiled eight options for fuel-economy standards for vehicles made between 2021 and 2026. Of those, the agencies recommend freezing standards at 2020 levels through 2026 as the best option.

If accepted, this would block mandatory yearly increases, which were ordered under Obama. The practical outcome will be to save car buyers about $2,340 per new vehicle, according to the administration. A separate 2016 study found that Obama's fuel regulations had already cost consumers at least $3,800 per car for the 2016 model year.

That higher price stymies some people who want to buy new, safer cars and thus forces manufacturers to make cars that buyers can't afford and don't want.

Instead of meeting a 54-mile-per-gallon standard by 2025, cars and light trucks would instead have to hit only 43.7 miles per gallon, the established 2020 level. This number is theoretical, however, and the real average number would be 30 miles per gallon under the new proposal, compared to 36 under Obama.

The Department of Transportation estimates that the new regulations will increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by only eight one-hundredths of a percent in the year 2100, and an average extra warming of only three-thousandths of a degree Celsius. That won’t save the planet.

We all want to live in a cleaner, safer world, but the best way for that to happen is not by tying people in misguided regulations but, rather, through market innovation fueled by consumer choice.

As Commentary Editor Timothy Carney pointed out in 2009, “Carmakers have long been able to make more efficient cars, but consumers haven’t been willing to pay enough to make them profitable.” That may no longer be the case today, but automakers will have the freedom to sell more efficient cars to those who are willing to pay for them, and those who can't afford them will have the option to buy less efficient cars that they prefer.

Consumers, not lawmakers in Washington, should choose what cars they buy and drive. If people want more fuel-efficient cars, they will buy them. If they don’t, then the government compelling car companies to make expensive cars that people don’t want will only result in those cars sitting in sales lots.

Existing fuel emissions regulations have already undercut the U.S. auto industry and hurt domestic consumers who depend on cars for transportation. It is time for those restrictions to be reversed, and it is laudable that the Trump administration is scrapping a piece of environmental posturing and instead taking action that will actually help Americans.