Love him or not, President-elect of the United States Donald Trump has so far proved he’s got some very sturdy opinions. One of those is that the United States emissions legislation does damage to the American competitiveness, and Trump just might be on the way to reverse it all.

Trump could reverse the legislation which forces car makers in the U.S. to make ever-cleaner cars, potentially causing thousands of people to die as the result of the increased air pollution.

Automobiles and trucks collectively make a fifth of all the emissions in the States and both Democrats and Republicans alike have so far worked to reduce the gas emissions through legislation which forces car manufacturers to lower the tailpipe emissions. The situation is the same in Europe.

However, the senior policy advisor to Trump, John Mashburn, said that Trump’s administration will make a comprehensive review of all the federal regulations, including fuel economy and emissions standards to make sure these do not harm American consumers or workers.

Donald Trump will not only have the Oval Office, but also the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, which are both controlled by the Republicans. This makes it a lot easier for Trump to pass the laws that could reverse emissions legislation.

An article posted by the famous car website Jalopnik states that United States citizens just do not want smaller and more fuel efficient cars since the prices of the fuel are low. The article claims that this law does harm to car manufacturers and costs people’s jobs because they are forced to build fewer cars which the buyers wouldn’t choose anyway, instead of large numbers of cheaply-made pickup trucks which spend a lot of gas.

In short, this would be the easy option to relax laws and let car manufacturers to pump out as much air pollution as they wish.

And yet there are 5.5 million people that die worldwide as the result of air pollution. Most death cases occur in developing countries, but still the harmful effects of the lethal toxins which exhaust gases contain are the same everywhere.

Michael Brauer of the Canadian University of British Columbia in said for a BBC article in February 2016 that the whole population benefits when the air quality improves.

For every dollar spent on air pollution improvements in the United States, we can get from 4 to 30 dollars benefit in terms of reduced health impacts.

It seems that Trump seems has forgotten that this is not the ‘70s any more. Today is no longer the time when the U.S. global manufacturing might go unchallenged.

But perhaps Donald Trump should reflect on a previous American President before deciding to make any rash policy moves. Lowering air pollution is a hard task ahead of us, and it will continue to be, but if we want to make this world a better place to live, then Kennedy’s way must be our way. If Donald Trump decides to take the easy route, them more and more people will sadly and inevitably die of air pollution.