Trump Vows to End ‘Madness’ of EV Push

September 06, 2023

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by Lauren Sforza (The Hill) Former President Trump is vowing to end the “madness” of the Biden administration’s push for electric vehicles — a likely appeal to voters in the swing state of Michigan.

In a pair of Truth Social posts Monday evening, Trump took aim at the electric vehicle industry and President Biden’s push for more electric vehicles. With this opposition to electric vehicles, Trump is likely trying to persuade Michigan voters to support him over Biden, who carried the swing state in 2020.

“The Great State of Michigan will not have an auto industry anymore if Crooked Joe Biden’s crazed concept of ‘all Electric Cars’ goes into effect,” he wrote in the Truth Social post. “CHINA WILL TAKE IT ALL, 100%. United Auto Workers, VOTE FOR TRUMP. Get your leaders to ENDORSE ME, I WILL KEEP ALL OF THESE GREAT JOBS, AND BRING IN MANY MORE. CHOICE IN SCHOOLS, AND CHOICE IN CARS!!!” READ MORE

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Excerpt from Politico Pro Climatewire: Autoworkers aren’t just turned off by electric vehicles because they might kill their jobs. They also don’t want to purchase them, and aren’t buying into either party’s approach to electrification — a view that signals political risks for both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner.

In interviews across the country Monday, many striking members of the United Auto Workers said they would likely shun EVs because of charging worries and the vehicles’ high prices. While some said they were inclined to credit Biden for walking the picket line Tuesday, others expressed distrust that either the president or Trump could do anything to save their jobs in the face of the EV transition.

“We’ve got a lot of people that are frustrated, just with all of them,” said Aaron Westaway, a unit bargaining representative, of the presidential candidates. He is part of UAW Local 900, which covers the Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, on the outskirts of Detroit. READ MORE

Excerpt from The Messenger: The cars are also a potential dividing line between union leadership, which has embraced them, and some workers who view the vehicles with suspicion.

The political and cultural fault lines exposed by electric vehicles are myriad: climate change and green energy; China and trade; class and union labor; urban and rural divides; free market vs. government intervention; nostalgia for a bygone era vs. the promise of a new future.

For Biden, electric vehicles are a legacy issue – part of his historic plans to fight climate change, bolster green energy and meet soaring demand for electric cars and trucks. That includes making the U.S. auto industry competitive with the global leader, China, through billions of dollars in grants, loans, charging-station construction contracts, and policy changes that would require two-thirds of all new cars sold in the U.S. to be electric vehicles in 2032. The president also wants to end all federal purchases of gas-powered vehicles in 2035, when progressive California wants to ban all gas-powered sales.

The bicoastal Democratic electric vehicle push has stiffened longtime conservative opposition to the cars, with some Republicans dubbing them “Bidenmobiles.”

“Joe Biden’s draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs. The only thing Biden could say today that would help the striking autoworkers is to announce the immediate termination of his ridiculous mandate,” Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform Tuesday, ahead of Biden’s visit to Detroit when he became the first president to visit a union picket line and encourage striking workers.

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“Trump needs to divide union members from their union to have a shot in Michigan, and he sees this issue of electric cars as his vehicle, that it’s going to destroy their jobs and that the union is selling them out,” said Steve Rosenthal, a veteran union consultant.

“Electric vehicles are one of the key issues of the campaign for the union,” he said. “If they’re not going to become the horseshoe-makers union of the last turn of the century, the UAW knows they have to adjust to electric vehicles and making sure there are jobs for their members, making sure they can organize the battery plants and to raise the wages and working conditions and standards of living for workers in the industry.”

Democrats and union officials acknowledge that electric vehicles are less than ideal for their membership.

Electric vehicles, compared to all of the moving parts of an internal combustion engine, are easier to assemble and therefore require fewer workers, a threat to organized labor. More electric vehicle parts are manufactured in China.

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Trump has not supported the union’s wage and labor demands; Biden has.

Meanwhile, as U.S. automakers begin retooling to make electric vehicles and batteries, they want to continue shifting production from the industrial Midwest to more “right to work” states, particularly in the South, that are hostile to organized labor – another source of angst for workers.

There’s also general reluctance of many workers, trained to build gas-powered cars for storied American brands, to make the switch to building battery-powered vehicles in the name of climate change, especially in light of some of the complicated questions about the degree to which electric vehicles reduce carbon footprint (they’re cleaner overall than internal combustion engines).

Indeed, the issue is far more broad than Trump’s opposition: READ MORE

Excerpt from Axios: Politics influences whether electric vehicles are taking off in various states, according to a new report.

Why it matters: That finding, part of wider new analysis from the research firm BloombergNEF, arrives as EVs are bound up in 2024 politics.

Former President Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, is bashing President Biden's pro-EV policies, as are some rivals.
Meanwhile, EVs are dicey politics for Biden as leaders of the striking United Auto Workers fear the EV transition will leave workers behind.

Driving the news: BNEF finds links between median income and share of EVs in a state fleet, but "there is a greater relationship to date between the political leanings of a state and its EV adoption."

Yes, but: Many forces affect where EV adoption is relatively robust or low, they find.

Policy matters. California is the runaway leader, but multiple states with relatively high sales follow its vehicle emissions policies.
State purchase subsidies are in play too. So are sales laws — states that allow EV makers to bypass dealerships and sell directly to consumers tend to have somewhat higher uptake.

The intrigue: There are other influences as well. For instance, New York and Illinois lag "peer blue" states, even though both are run by pro-EV officials.

One possible reason, aside from banning direct-to-consumer sales, is they have densely populated cities where charging can be tough, the report theorizes. READ MORE

Excerpt from Jalopnik: Former President Donald Trump reportedly told supporters at an event at a non-union auto-supplier in Michigan on Wednesday that electric vehicles would “spell the death of the U.S. auto industry” since they cost too much and consumers don’t want them.

On Ford and General Motors, Trump said the two automakers are “either stupid or they’re gutless” for shifting to build more EVs. The rally took place at Drake Enterprises, a small, non-union, auto supplier in Clinton Township, Michigan.

“They want to allow your gas-powered Suburbans, Silverados and Ford F-150s to die,” Trump reportedly said. “Under a Trump administration, gasoline engines will be allowed.” They are of course, also allowed under the current administration. From Automotive News:

He said companies such as Drake, which makes machined parts for gasoline engines and transmissions, will soon would be out of business if the industry continues to shift toward EVs, which he said “you can drive for 15 minutes before you have to get a charge.”

Although Trump spoke as if he was addressing UAW members who are currently on strike against the Detroit 3, Drake employees are nonunion...

Trump made the decision to hold this Michigan rally rather than attend Wednesday night’s Republican debate in California. It also comes just one day after President Joe Biden met with striking UAW members at a GM plant in Wayne County, Michigan. UAW President Shawn Fain invited him to come.

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Fain reportedly stopped short of endorsing Biden, but he said that Trump’s lack of support for union workers “speaks for itself.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal: Already this year, pricier electric vehicles got even more expensive for many potential buyers thanks to higher interest rates, which affect loan costs.

Now, anti-“woke” backlash and high-profile politics are increasingly making the suggestion of owning an EV a political cudgel. Or, as Ford Motor Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley recently lamented: “They have become a political football.”

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As the Democrat talks about trying to protect automotive jobs and help the environment with green technology, they raise concerns about losing work and question whether the governments should subsidize them or mandate future zero-emission vehicle sales, as California has done.

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The tensions have risen as Ford and other global automakers have spent billions of dollars designing and building EVs, a move that looked especially smart a year ago when they were caught off guard by the strong demand for their new offerings.

Now, they are pulling back those plans in the midst of a slowing pace of growth in demand.

This past week, General Motors said it would delay opening a large EV truck factory in Michigan by a year, citing a need “to better manage capital investments while aligning with evolving EV demand.”

The move followed an earlier announcement by Ford pushing back to late 2024 a target of building 600,000 EVs annually. The company has also temporarily cut one of the production shifts for its electric pickup and paused construction of a $3.5 billion battery plant in Michigan.

Even Elon Musk sounded worried Wednesday when he suggested that

Tesla TSLA -4.31%decrease; red down pointing triangle

was slowing work on a new factory in Mexico.

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Among the state’s United Auto Workers union members, Trump leads 46% to 43%. Bernie Porn, the pollster, said the slippage among union members was likely because of Biden’s support of EVs.

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In some ways, the green car tensions are a return to the 2012 political season, when GM’s Chevrolet Volt became the embodiment of the Obama administration’s rescue of the Detroit auto industry in 2009 and efforts to promote electrified vehicles.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination, said the problem with the “Obama car” was that one couldn’t put a gun rack in the plug-in hybrid vehicle.

Sales of the Volt disappointed, and Dan Akerson, then CEO of GM, was left fuming that the company hadn’t designed the sedan to become “a political punching bag.”

GM later killed off the Volt. READ MORE

Excerpt from Iowa Capital Dispatch: Trump claimed other Republican presidential candidates will not defend Iowa farmers and the ethanol industry as well as he did as president. Trump said DeSantis, his closest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, is “totally against ethanol,” referencing his opposition to ethanol subsidies while serving as a U.S. representative.

In a column published by the Des Moines Register in September, DeSantis said he would support giving consumers more options at the gas pump, “including higher ethanol blends such as E30 and higher octane options.”

But Trump said that Iowans should not trust DeSantis changing his stance on the issue.

“One thing about a politician: If they’re against something, and then they come out (for it) because you’re in the middle of election, they always go to where they first came from,” Trump said. “That means if he’s against ethanol then that means he’s against ethanol. He will kill ethanol.”

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Iowa Rep. Luana Stoltenberg, a ministry leader representing Davenport, said in a statement Sunday that she endorses Trump because “I know he will deliver.”

“In this day of chaos and corruption, with RINOs rampant, we need someone we can trust,” Stoltenberg said in a release from the Trump campaign. “President Trump has proven what he can do. He is the most pro-life President we have ever had. We had no wars and America’s economy was thriving. We were drilling and using our own oil, and jobs were coming back to America. Our borders were controlled, and our enemies feared us. We need President Trump back and right away.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Bloomberg: But as he stumps for a return to the White House, former President Donald Trump has called Biden’s plan a “a ridiculous all-electric-car hoax” and warned EVs will kill jobs and put American automakers out of business.

“Blue states say EVs are great and we need to adopt them as soon as possible for climate reasons,” Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford and great-grandson of founder Henry Ford, said in an October interview with the New York Times. “Some of the red states say this is just like the vaccine, and it’s being shoved down our throat by the government, and we don’t want it. I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are.” READ MORE