Why Trump’s Freedom to Fix Order Could Lower Your Car Repair Bill

President Trump signed a memo titled “Lowering the Cost of Living by Promoting the Freedom to Fix” on June 29, 2026, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to spell out exactly what car owners are allowed to do when they repair their own emissions systems. The order lands in the middle of a long-running fight over whether drivers and independent mechanics have the right to the same repair information and parts access that dealerships get, and it arrives the same week a separate right-to-repair bill cleared a committee vote in the House.

What the Memo Actually Does

The memo asks the EPA to clarify what individual vehicle owners can do on their own cars to carry out emissions-related repairs while staying inside the Clean Air Act. It also pushes the agency to cut its reliance on the California Air Resources Board, which is currently the only body that certifies aftermarket emissions parts as legal under federal law. The memo instructs the EPA to look at deprioritizing civil enforcement against anyone who, acting in good faith, tries to restore their own vehicle to its original factory configuration. None of this rewrites existing law. It directs an agency to issue guidance and shift enforcement focus, which is a narrower and more reversible step than passing new legislation.

Real Repair Costs, Real Frustration

The order taps into a complaint that has grown louder as cars have added more sensors, software, and emissions hardware. Owners report paying dealership labor rates for basic emissions repairs that a home mechanic could once handle with a wrench and a code reader. Part of the problem is a certification bottleneck facing aftermarket parts makers at the state level in California, and part of it is that manufacturers control diagnostic software behind proprietary tools. Marc Scribner, a senior transportation policy analyst at the Reason Foundation, told Reason the memo likely will not produce a big swing in repair costs on its own, distinguishing it from a true nationwide right-to-repair law. Scribner’s read lines up with how narrowly the memo is written: it targets one federal agency’s emissions enforcement posture, not the broader question of who controls a car’s diagnostic data.

The Bill Moving Through Congress

Separately, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce advanced an amended version of the REPAIR Act inside the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026, known as H.R. 7389. The bill would write the 2014 agreement between automakers and independent repair shops into federal law for vehicles under 14,000 pounds, and it would do the same for a 2015 heavy-duty version covering trucks above that threshold. If Congress passes it, automakers would have to give vehicle owners and independent shops access to the diagnostic, repair, calibration, and recalibration data currently locked inside manufacturer-only tools. That bill, not the president’s memo, is the piece of this story with the power to change federal law rather than agency guidance.

A Patchwork of State Laws Right Now

Today, only Massachusetts and Maine have right-to-repair laws that cover cars specifically, the product of a 2020 Massachusetts ballot initiative that passed with strong voter support after automakers spent tens of millions of dollars opposing it, making it the most expensive ballot campaign in that state’s history at the time. States including California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Oregon have right-to-repair laws covering other product categories such as electronics, farm equipment, and appliances, but not cars specifically. Connecticut’s right-to-repair law took effect July 1, 2026, covering home appliances and electronics rather than vehicles. That leaves most American car owners without a state-level guarantee that they, or their local mechanic, can get the same repair data a dealership gets.

Why This Fight Keeps Coming Back

Car manufacturers argue that opening up diagnostic data raises real intellectual property and liability concerns, worried about a shop making an unauthorized repair that manufacturers then get blamed for down the line. Supporters counter that most repairs are already within reach of owners and independent shops, and that manufacturers have already taken steps in some cases to clarify what customers can do without help. Both sides agree cars keep adding computing power every model year, which means the practical stakes of this fight grow with each new generation of vehicles rather than shrinking.

What Drivers Can Do Right Now

Nothing in the new memo changes what a car owner can legally do today. Drivers in Massachusetts and Maine already have the strongest legal footing to demand repair data from a dealer or manufacturer. Everyone else is working within whatever access a specific automaker chooses to provide voluntarily, which varies by brand and by model year. Owners frustrated by dealer-only repair costs on emissions-related work can ask their state representative whether a right-to-repair bill covering vehicles has been introduced. Momentum at the state level, not a presidential memo, has been the mechanism that has actually changed the law so far. For now, the practical advice is to track H.R. 7389’s progress through Congress rather than expect an immediate change at the local repair shop.

The 2020 Massachusetts Fight, Revisited

The current federal push echoes a fight that already played out at the state level. When Massachusetts put a right-to-repair ballot measure to voters in 2020, automakers and their trade groups spent tens of millions of dollars campaigning against it, warning that opening diagnostic data to independent shops would create safety and security risks. Voters passed the measure anyway by a wide margin, and Massachusetts has operated under that law for several years without the industry’s warned-of consequences materializing at scale. That history shapes how lawmakers in other states, and now in Congress, look at the current debate. Opponents of right-to-repair rules have shifted their argument over time, moving from safety concerns toward intellectual property and liability arguments as the Massachusetts law’s track record made the original safety warnings harder to defend.

What Independent Shops Say They’re Missing

Independent mechanics and repair chains argue the core problem is not that repairs are impossible, but that they take longer and cost more without full access to a manufacturer’s diagnostic software and calibration data. A shop that has to send a car to a dealership for a single software step, like recalibrating a camera after a windshield replacement, passes that extra cost and delay on to the customer. Auto Care Association, the trade group representing the aftermarket repair industry, has pushed for federal legislation for years specifically to standardize that access across all fifty states rather than leave it to a patchwork of state laws that currently only fully covers two of them.

Where Emissions Rules Fit Into the Debate

The memo’s focus on emissions repairs specifically, rather than repair access broadly, reflects how tightly the two issues are tangled together in federal law. Under the Clean Air Act, tampering with emissions equipment carries civil penalties even when the person doing the work owns the car outright, which has long created a gray area for owners trying to fix their own catalytic converters, oxygen sensors, or evaporative emissions systems. Clarifying what counts as a legitimate repair, rather than illegal tampering, is a narrower fix than a full right-to-repair law, but it directly addresses one of the more common ways owners run into legal risk when they try to work on their own vehicles.

Watching What Happens Next

For now, the most concrete thing car owners can track is H.R. 7389’s path through the rest of Congress. A bill that becomes law changes what every manufacturer must provide nationwide, while a presidential memo only shapes how one agency enforces existing rules. The EPA has not yet published the guidance the memo requested, and there is no set deadline in the memo itself for when that clarification needs to happen. Owners hoping for lower repair bills in the near term should not expect a fast change tied to the memo alone. The more meaningful signal to watch is whether the REPAIR Act clears the full House and then the Senate. That version of this fight carries the power to actually rewrite what manufacturers are required to share.

Sources:

• Reason
• SEMA
• Kelley Blue Book