ICYMI: HuffPost: "It's Time To Fact-Check This Big GOP Claim On Biden's EV Revolution"

This morning Jonathan Cohn of HuffPost examined claims from House Republicans and others that President Biden's investments in American electric vehicle manufacturing somehow benefit China, rather than seizing back American leadership after the President's predecessor ceded it to China. The verdict: "there's very little to back up the Republican claim ? and an awful lot to suggest that it's wrong."

As Cohn notes, the numbers alone are stark: "Since Biden took office in January 2021, total auto industry [manufacturing] employment in the U.S. has risen from about 948,000 to 1,073,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a monthly rate of about 4,000 new auto jobs a month, as Jim Tankersley of The New York Times noted on Tuesday. Compare that to Trump's record: Total auto employment ended up in almost the exact same place it was at the beginning of his presidency." And as the New York Times' Jim Tankersley noted, even comparing auto manufacturing jobs added per month under Biden to the previous administration before COVID-19, the US has added five times as many jobs per month under Biden.

Cohn explains that this is only the beginning, and the President's incentives and investments are targeted precisely to boost American manufacturing: "By design, they apply only to vehicles and parts that come from the U.S. That will close the cost gap so that companies manufacturing electric vehicles and their parts can compete. And there are lots of signs that the effort is working. Auto companies have announced plans to build literally dozens of new factories in the U.S., […] They are expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, plus many more (along with economic growth) indirectly."

Since President Biden took office, electric vehicle (EV) sales have tripled, with over three million EVs now on America's roads. The Administration released its Build America, Buy America implementation plan to ensure that our EV future, throughout the supply chain, is Made In America. Congressional Republicans are threatening to undo that progress and send manufacturing and jobs back to China: "the worldwide transition to electric vehicles is almost certainly going to happen regardless of what U.S. policymakers do. The industry was committing to it even before Biden took office. The question now is who builds those vehicles and where. Repealing Biden policies, as Republicans have proposed doing, would take away incentives to build those vehicles and their parts here ? which means, you guessed it, many more would be built in China."

Read more below:

The Huffington Post: It's Time To Fact-Check This Big GOP Claim On Biden's EV Revolution
[Jonathan Cohn, 9/27/2023]

[…]

An Argument About The Future

To be fair, the Republican attacks on electric vehicles are mostly about two sets of Democratic policies that are just starting to take effect.

One is tighter emission standards, which U.S. manufacturers can meet only by making more electric cars. The other is a set of direct subsidies for electric vehicles so that it's cheaper for companies to build them and cheaper for consumers to buy them.

If Biden and the Democrats were only tightening emission standards, then decimating the domestic auto industry would be a real danger. That's because the Big Three can't currently make electric vehicles here in the U.S. as cheaply as automakers who are manufacturing the vehicles overseas, where worker pay tends to be a lot lower.

But that's why the subsidies are so important. By design, they apply only to vehicles and parts that come from the U.S. That will close the cost gap so that companies manufacturing electric vehicles and their parts can compete.

And there are lots of signs that the effort is working.

Auto companies have announced plans to build literally dozens of new factories in the U.S., many in what's coming to be known as the "battery belt," stretching from Georgia in the South to Michigan in the North. They are expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, plus many more (along with economic growth) indirectly.

You can see what that looks like, statistically and geographically, by checking out the tally that the progressive-aligned BlueGreen Alliance is keeping on its website.

The Strike And Its Real Meaning

That's not to say nothing could go wrong — or that it will all work out well for U.S. workers.

Even if the net effect of Biden policies is more auto jobs, as a recent study from Carnegie Mellon University predicted, many of them could be in factories that aren't subject to existing labor agreements guaranteeing good pay and benefits.

That includes jobs at a set of "joint ventures" that the Big Three plan to run with foreign partners in order to take advantage of the technology that Chinese and South Korean companies have developed ? and that American companies need to learn quickly if they want to catch up.

The UAW wants no part of this. Guarantees of a "just transition" in which the new electric vehicle jobs pay as well as the old factory positions is a key demand of its strike. The Big Three are resisting because, they say, if they have to pay the workers in EV factories too much, it will offset the help of the Biden subsidies.

Their anxiety about labor costs at these facilities, well-placed or not, is real ? and may help explain why Ford just announced it was "pausing" development of a massive battery plant it had planned to build in Michigan.

Finding the right balance between the two claims is going to be tricky. And though Biden and his aides have made it clear their sympathy for labor ? most visibly, with Biden's unprecedented visit to a Detroit-area picket line on Tuesday ? it remains to be seen whether they can pull off the transition in a way that allows both the companies and their workers to thrive.

But it seems unlikely that the alternative universe, with Republicans in charge, is one where autoworkers get more help. The hallmarks of Trump's presidency were anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and weakening of worker safety regulations, along with big tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

And that's not to mention the fact that the worldwide transition to electric vehicles is almost certainly going to happen regardless of what U.S. policymakers do. The industry was committing to it even before Biden took office. The question now is who builds those vehicles and where.

Repealing Biden policies, as Republicans have proposed doing, would take away incentives to build those vehicles and their parts here ? which means, you guessed it, many more would be built in China.

That really would be good for Beijing and bad for Detroit. And probably the rest of the U.S. as well.