TOLEDO, Ohio – TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) – donald trump says the Biden administration’s policy to promote electric vehicles is a “radical plan” that would kill the economy in auto-manufacturing states. Republican allies in the oil industry have spent millions on ads that say President 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 rope sticking out into the street?” Cagle said as he cleaned his minivan at a car wash near a General Motors transmission plant that later this year is expected to begin building electric drive units.
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 squeezed an attack at the top of the your observations Friday following his felony conviction in New York.
Democrats have been less vocal and more nuanced, championing Biden’s climate reduction goals while promoting local technology over competition from China.
But interviews with about 20 voters in the major industrial centers of Ohio and Michigan reveal a more complicated dynamic among the people who could decide the winner of November’s presidential and Senate elections.
The Toledo area is itself a crossroads for the issue. It’s an automotive city making the change from the internal combustion engine to electric power, like neighboring Michigan, a presidential swing state that is synonymous with the auto industry.
Not only has Toledo 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 gas and diesel vehicles.
This is where people like Cagle say issues like the cost of gas and groceries will be more important than EVs when they vote. But during interviews with people across the political spectrum, many were skeptical of the vehicles and criticized the Democratic president’s tax credits.
“You can’t shove EVs down people’s throats,” said Joe Dempsey of Oregon, Ohio, who drives a gas-electric hybrid Toyota that doesn’t require recharging.
The issue has put some Democrats in a sticky situation — perhaps none more so than Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a top Republican target as the GOP tries to gain control of the Senate.
He is having to navigate 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 spent about $16 million on advertising criticizing Biden’s policy to promote EVs, and that total includes about $1.5 million in Ohio criticizing Brown for his support, according to AdImpact and the 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, see linking him to Biden’s sweeping 2022 Inflation Reduction Actwhich created tax credits for EV buyers as a way to do this in an election year.
Brown voted for the law, which aims to combat climate change in part by providing a $7,500 tax credit for sales of new electric vehicles to spur steps toward the president’s goal of making vehicles 50% electric. of all new vehicle sales by 2030. Republicans and their allies routinely incorrectly refer to the policy as a government mandate.
But Brown has vowed to oppose a rule change proposed this summer by Biden to allow electric vehicles built in the United States but that include components made in China to qualify for the credit.
“This will allow China to infiltrate the American auto supply chain at the expense of American taxpayers,” Brown said in a statement in May. “American tax dollars should support American industry 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 of Biden, who is unpopular in Ohio, said former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, also a Democrat.
“Sherrod doesn’t have to worry about the Democrats. They love him,” Ryan said. “The question is: can he do the middle? I think he can. And if he is seen as disagreeing with the left, that will only be good for him.”
Biden visited EV factories and smiled as he Test drive the new electric Cadillac at the Detroit Auto Show. His top deputy in Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, defended Biden’s policy, but with the aim of protecting her state’s vital industry.
“We have to encourage innovation. There’s no question,” Whitmer said in an interview before Trump visited the state in May, where he has criticized electric vehicles. “We can’t allow Chinese companies to be the only ones innovating around electric vehicles, because then they will eat our lunch. “.
The Biden campaign notes that the president’s policies aim to shift EV 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 spokesman 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, relatively small shares of Americans — about 3 in 10 or fewer — see a benefit from electric vehicles for themselves, the economy or the US automobile industry.
John Hiskey, a Vietnam veteran from Toledo, said he thinks EVs are a great idea and doubts the industry would get this far without a government push. But he has no interest in buying one until he can visit his grandchildren without making multiple stops or wasting time charging the vehicle.
“I don’t want to wait half an hour until they start putting them in bars,” Hiskey said, adding that your vote won’t be influenced by which party or politician supports EVs.
Others said the vehicles are cost prohibitive, even with the tax credit.
“How can they buy electric vehicles when it is difficult to survive?” said Dru Wilson, 21, who attends a college outside Toledo.
Although oil manufacturers represent a fraction of what the two major parties’ political action committees are spending in swing states, that outweighs counterprogramming by pro-EV and environmental groups.
The Environmental Defense Action Fund and a related group spent just over $772,000 on ads, according to AdImpact, and little of that goes toward key presidential or Senate states.
Climate Power, a strategic communications group promoting Biden’s climate reduction goals, has committed to spending $80 million promoting the administration’s measures, including on advertising in swing states. The group declined to specify how much it expects to spend on advertising and noted that its efforts will also include raising voter awareness about a number of Biden measures, including the promotion of EVs.
It lacks a unifying call for Americans to embrace technology, similar to President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing on the moon in 1961 within a decade, said veteran Democratic strategist Joel Benenson, who was a pollster and senior adviser to Presidential campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“No one is telling an inspirational story for electric vehicles. So how do you develop this story and what will it mean for the future of America? ” said Benenson. “That 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.
