Haisten Willis of the Washington Examine reports the Biden administration’s continued obsession with electric vehicles.
The White House has announced plans to invest nearly $2 billion in electric vehicles, doubling down on the administration’s EV push as former President Donald Trump campaigns hard against it.
President Joe Biden’s Department of Energy unveiled a $1.7 billion program Thursday to convert 11 closed or “at-risk” auto manufacturing facilities in eight states into electric vehicle facilities. Those states include Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia.
“We’re giving 15,000 American workers the chance to keep their jobs,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on a call with reporters previewing the announcement. “We’re giving the communities who built American cars for generations the chance to build the vehicles of the future, and we’re giving American manufacturing a chance to get off the sidelines and get a better competition.”
The program will additionally lead to 2,900 new jobs, officials said, with most of those filled by labor union members, and could nearly double the annual domestic output of electric vehicles.
“This investment will create thousands of good-paying, union manufacturing jobs and retain even more— from Lansing, Michigan to Fort Valley, Georgia — by helping auto companies retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities,” Biden said in a prepared statement. “This delivers on my commitment to never give up on the manufacturing communities and workers that were left behind by my predecessor.”
From a political standpoint, the announcement represents a doubling down on Biden’s EV push as Trump makes disparaging EVs a central theme of his campaign.
“If Joe Biden’s extremist mandate is allowed to stand, gas-powered cars will be gone, Iowa ethanol will be totally destroyed, and the economy of this state will be decimated,” Trump said last fall. “When I’m back in the White House, I will save Iowa ethanol by repealing Joe Biden’s absolutely insane, job-killing electric vehicle mandate on day one.”
