Trump vows to undo Biden’s electric vehicle policies

The former president’s latest attempt to win auto workers’ votes came in a video that accused his successor of imposing “crippling mandates” on the industry.

Trump’s hopes on that front are all but doomed — in a memo in May, UAW President Shawn Fain wrote that another Trump term “would be a disaster” and that union members need to get “organized behind a pro-worker, pro-climate, and pro-democracy political program that can deliver for the working class.”

On the other hand, the union has also declined — so far — to endorse Biden. UAW said in May that it would hold off on endorsing a presidential candidate, despite its previous support for Biden and numerous other unions backing him for 2024. The auto union cited its skepticism of the electric vehicle transition, which threatens to reduce industry jobs.

Trump’s promises laid out Thursday are the latest in a series of steps he’s taken to try to leverage auto workers’ fears about electric vehicles into an electoral advantage in Rust Belt states, particularly Michigan, which narrowly voted for him in 2016 but flipped to Biden in 2020.

“Biden is a catastrophe for Michigan, and his environmental extremism is heartless and disloyal and horrible for the American worker, and you’re starting to see it,” he said at a Michigan campaign event in June, his third to the state in the 2024 race.

Biden has used a number of policies to push EVs, beyond the emissions rules. The Inflation Reduction Act he signed last year rewrote the tax incentives that can encourage consumers to buy electric vehicles, the 2021 infrastructure law put billions into charging stations and the administration is offering billions of dollars in grants, loans and loan guarantees to boost EV technology.

Biden met with Fain this week, focusing on contract talks with major automakers and the looming threat of a strike.

Trump’s antipathy to toughened rules on car and truck pollution is not new. His administration in 2019 sought to dramatically roll back the Obama administration’s auto emissions and efficiency standards, but Biden immediately paused that rollback when he took office in 2021. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been working on stricter standards since then.