US-EU framework says the two sides 'intend' to recognize car standards; the 25-year import exemption stays in the statute

The sentence that led The Autopian to ask whether America had accidentally killed the 25-Year Rule runs to one line, and neither government that published it put a name to it.

In August 2025 the White House posted a joint statement on a United States-European Union framework on an agreement on reciprocal, fair and balanced trade. The European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security posted the same instrument on its trade policy site. Both carry the line: "With respect to automobiles, the United States and the European Union intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other's standards."

Read quickly, that can sound like the end of what The Autopian calls the 25-Year Rule. The Autopian asked whether "the proposed rule" meant EU-built used vehicles would no longer have to be 25 years from the date of manufacture before they could be legally imported here. Its own answer was probably not, with the outcome left open. The statute agrees with the cautious answer.

What was claimed, and where

The framework statement is the two governments' description of an agreement they say they are working toward, and its verbs are not uniform. On conformity assessment, the document says the United States and the European Union "commit to facilitate conformity assessments" covering additional industrial sectors. On standards bodies, the two sides commit to enhance opportunities for technical cooperation between EU- and US-domiciled standards development organizations, with the stated objective of identifying and developing standards for the transatlantic marketplace in key sectors of mutual interest. On automobiles, the verb changes. The parties intend.

No person stands behind the automobile sentence. Neither the White House posting nor the Commission posting attributes it to a negotiator, a cabinet officer or a named agency head. It is the document speaking, and any attribution of the line to an individual would be supplying a name the captures do not carry.

The two postings carry the automobile sentence word for word. That establishes one narrow thing worth establishing, because the wording is the whole argument: both governments published the same sentence, with no transcription or paraphrase difference between the postings.

What the record says

The exemption people call the 25-year rule is statutory text. Section 30112 of title 49 of the US Code sets out prohibitions on manufacturing, selling and importing noncomplying motor vehicles and equipment. Its subsection (b), headed Nonapplication, provides that "This section does not apply to" a numbered list of categories.

Paragraph (9) of that list reads: "a motor vehicle that is at least 25 years old". Ten words, with no conditions attached to them in that text. It sits between paragraph (8), which covers a vehicle or equipment item requiring further manufacturing under section 30145, and paragraph (10), which covers a vehicle introduced in interstate commerce solely for testing or evaluation by a manufacturer that agrees not to sell it afterward. The exemption is one entry on a statutory list, and a list in the Code is changed by amending the Code.

The agency has already said in the Federal Register what that paragraph does. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration document published July 14, 1999 states: "Under 49 U.S.C. 30112(b)(9), a noncomplying motor vehicle may be imported with no Federal legal requirement to conform it if it is at least 25 years old." A stated intention between two governments does not touch that sentence or the paragraph it construes.

What the captured record does not settle is the machinery around that one sentence. Beyond that sentence, the 1999 document survives here as four disconnected fragments: one recording an amendment that added "show, or display" to the special purposes in section 30112; one barring sale, or transfer of possession or title, before a vehicle reaches 25 years old; one requiring that a policy be maintained until the vehicle is not less than 25 years old; and one referring to a vehicle or equipment item that does not conform with all applicable federal motor vehicle safety and bumper standards. Nothing in the captured text ties those fragments to one another, and this piece does not.

The rule's origin is where this piece is thinnest, and the honest version of it is short. The Autopian states that "Officially, the law that led to the rule is the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988." That lineage rests on the secondary account: the Act's own text was not obtained for this piece, so nothing here describes what the 1988 statute says internally.

For someone with a car on the other side of the Atlantic and a calendar, the operative fact has not moved, and it is a date. Paragraph (9) turns on the vehicle being at least 25 years old, and the August 2025 statement does not alter the words on that line. If mutual recognition ever reaches the import rule, it will arrive as something a reader can look up: an amendment to 49 U.S.C. 30112(b)(9), or a rulemaking published in the Federal Register by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So here is the test, and it resolves on a date. On December 31, 2026, paragraph (9) of 49 U.S.C. 30112(b) will still exempt a motor vehicle that is at least 25 years old, in those same terms. Two places settle it: the current text of section 30112, and the Federal Register for any NHTSA rulemaking that says otherwise.