It’s tough enough controlling costs when the unions have a monopoly over the supply of labor in your industry. It’s even tougher when the government decides what products you can produce.

That’s essentially what Washington does with its corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards. Last week Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, the lone Democrat in the Bush Cabinet, finalized fuel economy rules that will require SUVs, vans and other “light trucks” to achieve 24 miles per gallon by 2011, up from 21.6 mpg currently. Passenger cars now must average 27.5 mpg.

A straightforward gas tax would be a more rational way to cut gasoline use, assuming that in itself is a rational goal. But the politicians have no desire to repeat the Clinton administration’s experience, when mere mention of such a tax aroused a firestorm of opposition. So they are sticking with the sneakier “tax” of CAFE regulations.

Bureaucrats love CAFE because it empowers them to override marketplace decisions by those pesky consumers. Consumers have shown very clearly, through their purchasing patterns, that they don’t care much for the politicians’ vision of the cars and trucks they ought to be buying. In addition to fuel economy, they must consider price, performance and degree of luxury.

But all these things flow, to one degree or another, from the basic power design, which is critically affected by Washington regulations. And once a law is on the books, it’s hard to take it back – even when it has failed to deliver on its promise of “energy independence.”

Indeed, CAFE, first enacted in 1975, has been accompanied by a steady rise in consumption of foreign oil, thanks in large part to the refusal of environmental zealots to allow more exploration and drilling here at home. And to the extent CAFE actually reduces demand for oil, it works to hold down prices – which in turn makes it cheaper to drive. Americans have responded by greatly increasing the miles they drive, undercutting the broader goal of reducing use of carbon-based fuels.

And in 2001 the National Academy of Sciences agreed with findings by the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute that CAFE kills. To meet mileage standards, automakers were forced to make lighter cars, which happen to be less safe in a crash. The NAS estimated that up to 2,600 extra deaths occur each year because of CAFE – as many Americans as have been killed in Iraq since the war there started.

Sure, automakers will meet the standards. But if, as many critics claim, the world is running out of oil, the market will force serious adjustments anyway. With gasoline pushing $2.50 or even $3 a gallon, consumers already have cut their demand for SUVs by 15-30 percent, for example – even before President Bush offered up his Jimmy Carter-esque lecture on our “oil addiction.”

Detroit has long been a handy whipping boy for those in Washington and elsewhere who like to whip up fears about the carbon economy, a rationale for increased government control over the lives of everyday Americans. But Washington’s meddling – anybody remember the oil price controls of the 1970s, or the Justice Department’s effort to bust up the supposedly indomitable General Motors in the 1950 and 60s? – is an even bigger reason the industry has been unable to respond as nimbly as it might to its newer, younger competition.

And now that Detroit’s automakers are facing bankruptcy, the Bush administration is demanding another expensive reengineering of the nation’s vehicle fleet. It will mean less money for designs that people might actually like – and lower wages for those who build the cars that pass muster down at the government CAFE.

Chalk it up as another wrong turn from Washington.

Mr. Bray is a Detroit News columnist.