In his State of the Union speech this year, President Bush promised to break the nation's "addiction" to foreign oil within the next 20 years. Apparently, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta didn't get the message. The new fuel-economy stand-ards for trucks, SUVs and mini-vans announced by Mineta on Wednesday will do nothing to fulfill the president's pledge. The new mileage standards are so modest that U.S. oil consumption will continue to rise even if every U.S. car manufacturer meets every one of the new mileage targets by the 2011 deadline.

As modest as they are, the new standards at least represent a slight improvement. They can be compared to a severely overweight person who diets by having a low-calorie drink with his fudge cake and ice cream. That's helpful, but not by much.

Still, for the first time ever, many (but not all) of the gas-hungry SUVs, light trucks and mini-vans that have become so popular in the last 20 years will have to meet mileage standards, just as do traditional cars.

Some of these vehicles were exempt from mileage standards because of outdated laws that considered a pickup truck a work vehicle for agriculture and other uses. Today, these vehicles most often carry a single person on a slow commute to an office job. Still, the new rules continue to exempt vehicles over 10,000 pounds, such as H1 Hummers and heavy pickup trucks — again, on the presumption that they are primarily used for agriculture and business.

The new rules come at a time when larger forces — such as rising gas prices, new technology and stiff competition from Asian and European automakers — are having a bigger impact on Americans' driving habits and the president's oil-independence goal than the Transportation Department's mileage standards. This is why the new rules are more disappointing than they are encouraging. They put the federal government in the position of following rather than leading the push to greater energy conservation — despite the president's pledge to end U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Once the new standards are fully implemented, manufacturers will have increased the average fuel efficiency of their fleets to 24 mpg from the current mark of 21.6 mpg. That is certainly better than standing still. But competition and gas prices will push manufacturers more. The new goals will be challenging, automakers say, but they expect to meet them.

The new rules will encourage auto manufacturers to divert some of the effort that has gone into making vehicles faster and heavier in the last two decades to making vehicles more energy efficient. That's a start, albeit a modest one.