With violent rhetoric, Trump fights electric vehicles to defeat Biden in Michigan
Trump has warned that Biden's policies encouraging the transition to electric vehicles would result in an economic “bloodbath” in the U.S. economy that would “kill” the auto industry.
An issue at the core of Joe Biden’s presidency that former President Donald Trump is zeroing in on with increasingly violent rhetoric could have outsize influence in critical battleground territory: the effort to accelerate the U.S. transition from gas-powered automobiles to electric vehicles.
For Biden, the combination of subsidies to boost electric vehicle manufacturing, new federal standards aimed at further cutting emissions, investments in charging infrastructure and tax credits to encourage electric vehicle purchases amounts to arguably his most ambitious industrial policy and climate change agenda. He has made repeated trips to electric vehicle assembly lines and newly built battery plants as he and his administration tout the new jobs his agenda has fostered and the increased share of Americans now driving electric vehicles.
Yet Trump and many of his allies have zeroed in on that agenda, particularly in Michigan, long the hub of the American auto industry, in dire and violent terms, warning of the potential for mass job losses and railing against vehicles that are cost-prohibitive, require electric infrastructure that in many places does not yet exist and are yet to perform up to the same capabilities as their gas-powered peers.
Auto manufacturing jobs are growing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the sticker prices of some electric models are starting to come down. But the Biden administration also recently slashed its target for electric vehicle adoption by 2032 from 67% to roughly half that amount amid pushback from auto labor and management.
The battle is likely to rage strongest in the bitterly contested state of Michigan, as well as in Georgia, a purple state that has drawn billions in electric vehicle investments from carmakers. In fact, many of the new electric vehicle-related plants that have opened in recent years have been in red states like South Carolina and Kentucky, where state and local lawmakers have touted their boost to local economies — and where weak union protections allow for low labor costs.
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