Bait-and-switch, hidden fees and other dealer scams could proliferate under the incoming administration of Donald Trump, experts warn, as the president-elect signals plans to eliminate or scale back various consumer protection rules.

While most dealers are honest, there are plenty of scam artists who would face tough new guidelines under the CARS rules.
Buying a new vehicle is always a challenge, studies routinely showing the purchase process to be one of the things consumers dread most. It’s not just the challenge of haggling over the final price tag but the risk of being taken advantage of.
Bait-and-switch, hidden fees and other scams are commonplace, according to consumer protection specialists who have pressed federal and state lawmakers to step in and ban fraudulent practices. They’ve won some big victories, most recently with the Federal Trade Commission’s new Combating Auto Retail Scams, or CARS, rule which makes the car buying process more transparent by, among other things, requiring dealers to get clear consumer consent for any charges they might face.
But there’s strong speculation that the anti-regulatory push during Donald Trump’s first term in office will only be accelerated as her returns to the White House in January. The CARS rule and other measures meant to protect automotive shoppers could face the axe or, at the least, be less aggressively enforced, critics fear. And that could open the door for unscrupulous dealers to resume questionable practices such as loading up purchase contracts with costly junk fees.
The CARS rule is “probably on the list of things that Trump supporters would like to get rid of, Francis Curran, senior counsel at the Tully Rinckey law firm of Albany, New York told Automotive News. “And with the courts starting to take a crack at reducing the so-called regulatory state,” Curran added, “whether or not he cares about the FTC, he’s probably going to appoint people who will roll back some of that.”
The CARS rule

The CARS rule sets out specific requirement, including the need for dealers to fully disclose all charges.
Expected to save motorists as much as $3.4 billion annually, the CARS rule has been billed by the FTC as “a big win for consumers, who lose billions of dollars in wasted time and money each year to illegal practices like bait-and-switch tactics and junk fees. It’s also a big win for honest car dealers who strive to apply established truth-in-car-buying principles at their dealerships and shouldn’t have to compete against dealers who don’t.
The rule was supposed to take effect last July, though the Federal Trade Commission put it on hold pending legal challenges.
Should it survive the courts – and the Trump administration, the new measure would, according to the FTC:
- Prohibit misrepresentations about certain material information;
- Require dealers to clearly disclose the offering price – the actual price anyone can pay to get the car, excluding only required government charges. Before they visit the dealership and throughout the transaction, consumers have the right to know the drive-off-the-lot price. If a dealer mentions optional add-ons, the dealer has to tell the consumers they can say no. And if discussing a monthly payment, the dealer has to tell the consumer total payment information;
- Make it illegal for dealers to charge consumers for add-ons that don’t provide a benefit;
- Require dealers to get consumers’ express, informed consent before charging them for anything.
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“On the same page”

Trump was decidedly anti-regulatory during his first term and is expected to take a similar approach in his second.
Backers of the CARS rule and other consumer protection measures insist these will not only protect vehicle buyers but legitimate dealers, as well, the FTC noting on its website that they won’t have to compete against unscrupulous retailers who often disguise charges to make shoppers think they’re getting a great deal.
Not everyone agrees. That includes the the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Texas Automobile Dealers Association, both of which sought a review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. That move led the FTC to delay implementation of the CARS rule.
In its appeal, NADA called the CARS rule, “simply terrible for consumers, adding massive amounts of time, complexity, paperwork and cost to car buying and car shopping for tens of millions of Americans every year.”
There’s opposition elsewhere that could lead to the scuttling of the mandate. And that includes one of the new Republican senators who will take office in January. Bernie Moreno, who defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio, is set to become the first car dealer to serve in the Senate. Moreno has laid out a decidedly anti-regulatory position that would eliminate many of the rules covering the auto industry and has said he is “on the same page” as Trump. As a dealer, he is expected to add further pressure on the incoming White House to relax rules covering the retail side of the business.
Consumer advocates expected to fight back

The courts barred Trump from stripping California of its right to set unique emissions standards effectively creating EV mandates.
Trump is expected to take broad steps to load the federal bureaucracy with loyalists, among other things expressing his desire to weaken civil service protections that bar political loyalty tests. That would, if followed through on, further threaten consumer protection rules at the federal level.
Opponents are already outlining plans to challenge key Trump goals in court, including rollbacks of environmental standards. They’re hoping to repeat some of the successes they had in his first term where, among other things, Trump was prevented from stripping California’s ability to set unique emissions standards. Whether federal courts will come through again is far from certain as the incoming president is also expected to appoint a substantial number of loyal federal judges during his term.
That said, observers anticipate, there could be a flurry of new, pro-consumer rules and legislation coming at the local level – particularly from Democratic-controlled states like California and New York.
“I think certain states might get more aggressive in certain ways,” attorney Curran said. But he warned that this approach can create a “patchwork” of rules that will vary from state to state and, in some, leave motorists facing little to no protection from the sort of unscrupulous practices that have long made them fear, even hate, the car buying process.
Trump cares about the average guy, just like he said.
LMFAO!
YEP, Trump wants to kill us.
JFC, get off it Paul. He won! In four years you can nominate another pair of morons and again, curse the darkness.