Almost immediately after Kamala Harris announced her plans to “bring back manufacturing” and make America competitive with China again, it was revealed that the Biden-Harris administration‘s push for electric vehicles has actually eliminated thousands of manufacturing jobs, in another blatant contradiction of what she claims her policy will be if elected president compared to her record.
The Daily Caller reports:
GM announced it will temporarily cut nearly 1,700 factory workers on Saturday as it retrofits its Fairfax, Kansas, factory to manufacture the electric Chevrolet Bolt instead of the gasoline-powered Chevrolet Malibu, joining fellow automaker Stellantis, which revealed plans to lay off 2,450 employees in August as it discontinues the classic version of its Ram-1500 truck in favor of an electrified pickup, according to Bloomberg and a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice. The layoffs are a canary in a coal mine for the blue collar job losses that the Biden-Harris administration’s EV push will create, as the vehicles require less labor to manufacture and depend more on Chinese parts than their internal combustion engine counterparts, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
This comes after the Biden-Harris administration not only offered enticing subsidies to car manufacturers favoring electric vehicle production, and also offered $7500 tax breaks for American citizens to buy designated electric vehicles.
The Daily Caller continues:
As part of its goal of having EVs make up at least 50% of all new car sales by 2030, the Biden-Harris administration has lavished subsidies on automakers, making $12 billion in taxpayer funds available for manufacturers to retrofit their plants in August 2023 in what the White House claimed would create over 2,900 new high-quality jobs. GM claimed a retrofitting process — “the installation of new tooling” — was the reason for the Fairfax, Kansas, temporary layoffs.
Director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the Heritage Foundation Diana Furchtgott-Roth said, “The GM layoffs, following the Stellantis layoffs, show that auto jobs are going away to China from the United States. With the [Biden-Harris] administration’s rules for forced renewables and EVs, China is nibbling at the foundations of American prosperity like termites nibble at the foundations of a house.”
The Daily Caller goes on to explain how this electric vehicle push will only enrich China, despite Harris’s new talking points:
China accounts for 41% of the world’s cobalt mining and 28% of the world’s lithium — two of the rare earth minerals essential to manufacturing the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs, according to The New York Times. As a result, China is projected to produce twice as many batteries as every other country combined by 2030, despite the billions in subsidies the Biden-Harris administration has put towards expanding U.S. EV battery production.
EVs have substantially fewer moving parts and require roughly 30% less labor to manufacture, according to a 2017 presentation from Ford Motors, reducing demand for American assembly line workers. A 2018 research study from the United Auto Workers found the EV transition could eliminate as many as 35,000 union auto manufacturing jobs, while a 2023 report from the America First Policy Institute found the Biden-Harris administration’s tailpipe emissions rule, which effectively stipulates 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 be electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids, would eliminate 117,000.
In addition to eliminating blue collar jobs (while voters grapple with the harshest economic conditions the country has seen in years), electric vehicles cost significantly more. Despite the tax credits, Americans remain hesitant to make the switch to electric vehicles.
Senior vice president of public affairs and communications for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, Nick Iacovella said, “The GM layoffs serve as a stark reminder that the Biden administration’s rapid push toward electric vehicles (EVs), without adequately addressing China’s aggressive tactics to dominate the industry, is having a significant negative impact on American workers.”
Mark Mills, Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, “It may sound like hyperbole, but it’s not an exaggeration to say that we risk the wholesale destruction of the U.S. auto industry. It is obvious that the subsidies are neither accelerating any putative, significant cost declines in EVs, nor making it feasible to completely restructure the auto industry. The subsidies, instead, are increasing the dependence on foreign materials and creating foreign jobs, especially in China.”
