UAW chief slams Trump over threat to repeal EV investments

11:20 am Thursday, October 10th, 2024

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain on Thursday said hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs were at stake if Republican former President Donald Trump won the Nov. 5 election and made good on his threat to repeal investments in electric vehicles.

Democrats have seized on Trump’s running mate, U.S. Senator JD Vance of Ohio, declining to commit to maintaining a $500 million investment to help GM convert an existing Cadillac plant into an electric vehicle facility.

Fain, who has endorsed the Democratic nominee in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris, said removing the funds would put at risk some 650 jobs in Lansing, Michigan, and have a greater impact across the United States.

“It’s a lot bigger than just the Lansing Grand River investment. It’s factories all over the United States, and it’s supply chain factories all over the United States that are being put in place now. So you’re talking hundreds of thousands of jobs that Donald Trump is just writing off,” Fain told reporters ahead of Trump’s visit to Detroit later on Thursday.

Vance had drawn fire from the UAW last week for giving noncommittal answers on questions about the money allocated to GM for the electric vehicle plant.

Asked about it again on Tuesday, Vance said neither he nor Trump had ever said they would take “any money that’s going to Michigan auto workers out of the state of Michigan” and said the Biden administration’s push for EV investments threatened some 117,000 autoworker jobs.

“What we’ve said is that Kamala Harris is offering table scraps – $500 million – when you have an EV mandate that’s going to cost 117,000 auto worker jobs,” Vance said, adding that EVs were selling slower than gas-powered cars.

Harris told a rally in Michigan last week she had no plans to institute an all-EV mandate, but wanted consumers to have a choice and companies to be able to compete with China.

Some autoworkers worry that switching to EVs could reduce the number of jobs in the auto industry, a claim Harris and her advisers reject, saying EV parts will also be made in the U.S.

Fain underscored the UAW’s endorsement of Harris, saying the Biden administration had imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs to ensure U.S. automakers had space to expand in that sector.

He rejected the idea that a large number of autoworkers supported Trump, saying internal polls showed that 65% of union members had consistently voted for Democratic candidates.

“It’s a very clear picture for us on who stands with working class people,” he said, adding that Harris had joined a picket line in 2019 when GM workers were on strike and Trump was in office but remained silent on the labor action.

Trump told Reuters in August that if elected he would consider ending a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchases included in the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, saying tax credits and incentives were “not generally a very good thing.”If elected, Trump could take steps to reverse Treasury Department rules that have made it easier for automakers to take advantage of the $7,500 credit or could ask the U.S. Congress to repeal it entirely.

While president, Trump sought to repeal the EV tax credit which was later expanded by President Joe Biden in 2022.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Susan Heavey and Deepa Babington)