There is a specific kind of amnesia that seems to afflict corporate America whenever a new administration enters the White House. This week, Ford CEO Jim Farley (pictured above standing next to President Trump in the Oval Office) exhibited a severe case of it.
Following an announcement that the Trump administration would reset federal fuel economy standards, Farley took a victory lap on cable news. He celebrated the rollback as a win for “common sense,” claiming that the old rules “forced” Ford to sell electric vehicles that customers didn’t want.
“Frankly, [CAFE] was totally out of touch with the market reality,” Farley said.
This is a stunning revision of history. Farley wasn’t a hostage to the previous administration’s climate ideology; he was one of its loudest cheerleaders.
Jim Farley in his Ford F-150 Lightning/PHOTO: Jim Farley via LinkedIn
We are talking about a CEO who once claimed his pivot to EVs wasn’t about policy at all. In a public love letter to his F-150 Lightning, Farley famously wrote, “It wasn’t government policies or political beliefs that sparked this late-career romance with electric vehicles.” He claimed the demand was organic and the technology was superior.
Now that Ford’s EV division has become a financial black hole—losing billions of dollars annually—Farley has suddenly discovered that the government “forced” him to do it.
The truth is that Ford leadership abandoned their fiduciary duty to shareholders in favor of political appeasement. They poured billions into an EV strategy that Robert Bryce noted resulted in losses exceeding $64,000 for every single EV sold in early 2024. They ignored the clear signals from dealers that inventory was piling up on lots. They chased government handouts, including billions in DOE loans, rather than building the reliable hybrids and trucks their customers actually bought.
Farley’s attempt to pivot back to “common sense” is welcome, but let’s not pretend he arrived here voluntarily. He was dragged here by the undeniable failure of the very policies he once embraced. Ford shareholders have paid a steep price for Farley’s “romance” with government planning. They shouldn’t let him rewrite the story of the breakup.
