In a highly charged speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, former President Donald J. Trump vowed to dismantle the electric vehicle policies of President Joe Biden on day one, claiming his move would save the U.S. auto industry from “complete obliteration” and American consumers “thousands of dollars per car.”
The remarks by Trump come at a time when the future of electric vehicles in the United States is very politicized. While the Biden administration did not issue any direct mandate for EVs, it did establish strict air pollution limits via the Environmental Protection Agency. Several critics say that such regulations have pressured vehicle manufacturers to raise the production of electric and hybrid models.
“I will end the Electric Vehicle Mandate on Day One,” Trump said, referring to the EPA’s new tailpipe pollution limits. He claimed that those standards are so strict that they require automakers to meet them by building EVs and hybrids, as many Republican lawmakers have also argued.
The House Ways and Means Committee voted this month on a bill sponsored by Rep. Jason Smith to kill the federal EV tax credit. “The Biden administration is sacrificing our economic independence in order to force more Americans to drive an electric vehicle,” Smith said, citing U.S. taxpayer dollars being siphoned off to the People’s Republic of China for the production of EV batteries and other materials.
Trump also seized the opportunity to pillory what he refers to as Biden’s “green new scam,” thereby suggesting that funds he believed would go to waste on environmental projects, funding that rightly belongs to roads, bridges, and dams, could be diverted from that. He has particularly attacked electric vehicles, calling them impractical, too costly, and a blight both on the economy of the homeland and on auto workers. “The cars don’t go very far. They’re very, very expensive. They’re also heavy,” Trump said recently to Bloomberg. He further claimed that there had been no consumer demand, yet no car company dared speak out against this.
Surprisingly, the EV industry has found an unlikely ally in Elon Musk, who pledged to donate over $180 million to America PAC, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing Donald Trump.
As the debate on electric vehicles gains more fire with each passing day, Trump’s commitment to scrapping Biden’s EV policy underlines the deep political chasm that exists on the matter. Whether what he is going to do will help galvanize the voters or further polarize the electorate, time only can tell.