News

Democrats vote against auto workers and American-made electric vehicles

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)

August 8, 2024

Chicago Tribune

…Earlier this year, UAW [United Auto Workers] told the U.S. trade office: “A coherent industrial policy that truly aims to build a resilient supply chain must focus federal investment on domestic production with high-road standards. Incentives that are open to foreign-made vehicles immediately undermine the purpose of industrial policy”….

My amendment [to an August 1 appropriations bill] was a direct answer to the problem. It would have extended the made-in-America requirements already integral to the federal government’s biggest EV tax credit (the “30D” credit) to all the other federal EV subsidy programs, which cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars….

Such a guardrail is more important than ever as American automakers—and the three million workers and families who rely on them—are facing an existential threat. Over the past decade, China has surged to become the largest vehicle exporter in the world. It hasn’t done this by making higher-quality vehicles. Instead, China’s communist government is heavily subsidizing its vehicle industry….

But the seriousness of this threat seems lost on my Democrat colleagues…. [T]hey opted for weak, non-binding “report language” that encourages the Biden-Harris Administration to think about these problems, but falls short of outlining a clear solution and putting it into law. Even more ironically, by opposing my amendment, Democrats opposed current guardrails to a law they wrote and passed on a party-line vote….

It is increasingly clear that Democrats are now more concerned with catering to green-energy special interest groups than protecting the American worker. Their perspective could be summed up by one economist’s callous observation that “[i]t would be cheaper just to let the Chinese cars come in…. Yes, it would be disruptive. But EVs would get on the road in the U.S. a lot faster”….

Importing cheap products made with slave labor may be good for some company’s bottom line, but it is terrible for our country. America needs to be a nation that builds great things with well-trained and highly paid workers who can provide for their families. This is a future worth fighting for, no matter which party you represent.

Read the rest here.