TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Donald Trump says the Biden administration’s policy to promote electric vehicles is a “radical plan” that would kill the economies of auto-making states. The oil industry’s Republican allies have spent millions on ads saying the president is That of Joe Biden tax credit for VE buyers will cost Americans their freedom.
For voters this election year, like Jim Cagle, a retired Jeep assembly line worker from Toledo, Ohio, concerns about all-electric vehicles are more practical, like how he would charge them. Cagle parks his car on the street because he doesn’t have a garage.
“Can you imagine having a cord going down the street? » Cagle said as he cleaned his minivan at a car wash near a General Motors transmission plant that is expected to begin building electric transmission units later this year.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and others say Biden’s push for electric vehicles is unfair to consumers and amounts to government overreach, and will ultimately be a liability for Democrats. Trump even launched an attack on the summit of his remarks Friday after his criminal conviction in New York.
Democrats have been less vocal and more nuanced, defending Biden’s climate reduction goals while promoting local technology over Chinese competition.
But interviews with about two dozen voters in key industrial centers of Ohio and Michigan reveal a more complex dynamic among those who could decide the winner of November’s presidential and Senate elections.
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The Toledo region is itself a crossroads of this problem. It’s a car town make the change from the internal combustion engine to electric power, like neighboring Michigan, a presidential state synonymous with the automobile industry.
Toledo has not only been producing Jeeps since World War II, but it is also home to oil refineries that supply gasoline throughout the Midwest and manufacturers of parts for gasoline and diesel vehicles.
This is where people like Cagle say issues like the cost of gas and groceries will be more important than electric vehicles when they vote. But in interviews with people across the political spectrum, many were skeptical of the vehicles and critical of the Democratic president’s tax credits.
“You can’t force electric vehicles on us,” said Joe Dempsey of Oregon, Ohio, who drives a Toyota gas-electric hybrid that doesn’t require charging. “Let the American people decide if this is going to happen.”
VULNERABLE SENATE DEMOCRAT IS A TARGET
That issue has put some Democrats in a tight spot — perhaps none more so than Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of Republicans’ top targets as the GOP seeks to take control of the Senate.
He must contend with a changing auto industry and his support for the president’s environmental goals in a state that Trump won twice by 8 percentage points.
An oil industry group has spent about $16 million on advertising criticizing Biden’s policies to promote electric vehicles, and that total includes about $1.5 million in Ohio criticizing Brown for his support, according to AdImpact and Group Reports. In addition to Ohio, the ads are running in six other swing states and Montana, a Republican-leaning state where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is seeking re-election.
Republicans, long unable to break Brown’s blue-collar support, plan to tie him to Biden’s sweeping 2022 plan Inflation Reduction Actwhich created tax credits for electric vehicle buyers, as a way to do that in an election year.
Brown voted for the law, aimed at combating climate change in part by providing a $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicle sales to spur progress toward the president’s goal of making electric vehicles 50 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2030. Republicans and their allies regularly refer to the policy falsely as a government mandate.
But Brown has pledged to oppose a rule change proposed by Biden this summer to allow electric vehicles built in the United States but including components made in China to qualify for the credit.
“This will allow China to infiltrate the U.S. automotive supply chain, at the expense of American taxpayers,” Brown said in a statement in May. “American taxpayer dollars should support American manufacturing and American workers – not enrich Chinese companies. »
Brown, a progressive with a pro-worker mantra, has little to worry about maintaining his party’s base. But he appears to be aware of the risks of being seen as too strong an ally with Biden, who is unpopular in Ohio, said former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, a fellow Democrat.
“Sherrod doesn’t have to worry about the Democrats. They love him,” Ryan said. “The question is: can he catch up to the middle? I think he can. And if he appears to disagree with the left, that only does him good.”
BIDEN AND THE DEMOCRATS DO THEIR BUSINESS
Biden visited electric vehicle factories and smiled road test the new electric Cadillac at the Detroit Auto Show. His top representative in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, argued for Biden’s policies, but with an eye toward protecting her state’s vital industry.
“We must encourage innovation. There’s no doubt about it,” Whitmer said in an interview before Trump’s visit to the state in May, where he spoke out against electric vehicles. “We can’t let Chinese companies be the only ones to innovate in electric vehicles, because then they would eat our lunch.”
Biden’s campaign notes that the president’s policies are aimed at moving electric vehicle jobs, many of which were left in China during the Trump administration, to the United States.
“Donald Trump would rather lie about President Biden’s policies than face his own betrayals of the middle class,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “President Biden wants the future of auto manufacturing to be built in America, not China. »
According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in April, a relatively small share of Americans — about 3 in 10 or fewer — see a benefit from electric vehicles for themselves, for the economy or for the economy. American automobile industry.
John Hiskey, a Vietnam veteran from Toledo, said he thinks electric vehicles are a great idea and he doubts the industry would get this far without government help. But he has no interest in getting one until he can visit his grandchildren without making multiple stops and taking the time to recharge the vehicle.
“I don’t want to wait a half hour before they start putting them in bars,” Hiskey said, adding that his vote won’t be influenced by which party or politician supports electric vehicles.
Others said the vehicles were prohibitively expensive, even with the tax credit.
“How can they afford electric vehicles when it’s difficult to live?” said Dru Wilson, 21, who attends college outside Toledo.
Although oil manufacturers account for only a fraction of what the two major parties’ political action committees spend in battleground states, it dwarfs the counterprogramming of pro-EV and environmental groups.
According to AdImpact, the Environmental Defense Action Fund and a related group have spent just over $772,000 on ads, and a small portion of that is targeted in key presidential or senatorial states.
Climate Power, a strategic communications group promoting Biden’s climate reduction goals, has pledged to spend $80 million to promote the administration’s measures, including for advertising in battleground states. The group declined to specify how much it plans to spend on advertising and noted that its efforts will also include educating voters on a series of Biden measures, including promoting electric vehicles.
A unifying call for Americans to embrace technology, akin to President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 moon landing goal, is missing during the decade, said veteran Democratic strategist Joel Benenson, who was a pollster and senior adviser presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“No one tells an inspirational story for electric vehicles. So how do you develop this story and what is it going to mean for America going forward? » Benenson said. “This could be a powerful narrative.”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed from Washington.