Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act approved last year by Democratic policymakers, the Biden/Harris administration announced an important investment a few months ago: $500 million will be spent to help General Motors convert a Cadillac plant in Lansing, Michigan, into a facility that will produce electric vehicles.
As HuffPost explained, it’s part of a larger $1.7 billion program “aimed at revamping 11 auto plants to make electric cars or components of them as part of the Joe Biden administration’s effort to speed up the conversion of Americans’ internal combustion-powered cars to more efficient and reliable electric ones.”
The question, of course, is what would happen to these investments in the event Donald Trump wins the election.
The answer is far from certain: Not only has the former Republican president vowed to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act, he’s also effectively running on an anti-climate platform.
With this in mind, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, was asked last week whether the $500 million investment in Michigan would be revoked after the election. The Ohio Republican refused to give a straight answer.
This week, as The Detroit News reported, Vance said something a little different.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance campaigned Tuesday in Detroit, where he described $500 million that the federal government is providing to convert a General Motors plant in Michigan for electric vehicles as “table scraps” compared with larger job losses he contends could be on the horizon.
In fairness, the senator did say that he and Trump “want to invest in Michigan auto workers as much as possible,” which was vague and unhelpful. But he also nevertheless characterized the pending $500 million investment — with several hundred jobs on the line — as “table scraps.”
That hardly inspired confidence in the future of the project, and it didn’t take long for Democrats to seize on this, as evidenced by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s remarks at an event in Michigan.
Gov. Walz: JD Vance just said if he and Trump win they might cancel Biden-Harris’ $500 million investment in a Michigan auto plant. He even called those jobs ’table scraps’. Tell that to 650 families who feed their families with those ‘table scrap’ jobs pic.twitter.com/UQJ2yhkn0z
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 11, 2024
Around the same time, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said in a written statement, “Major investments in Michigan auto jobs made possible by Vice President Harris aren’t ‘table scraps,’ they’re a lifeline that is building the future of American manufacturing. JD Vance and Donald Trump are out of touch with Michigan, and it’s obvious when you see them threatening to abandon Michigan workers and cede the future of manufacturing to China.”
That last point was of particular interest, because it speaks to the broader policy context.
To be sure, Vance’s “table scraps” comments reflected the latest in a series of out-of-touch moments for the Ohioan, but the larger question is whether a Trump/Vance administration would allow China to take the lead on building the next generation of vehicles.
To hear Vance tell it, Beijing already controls much of the E.V. manufacturing supply chain, so investing in E.V. vehicles necessarily helps China. But The New Republic’s Greg Sargent had a great report on this, explaining the nature of the Republican’s “misdirection.”
The [Inflation Reduction Act] contains many provisions ensuring that more E.V. parts are manufactured in the United States. Indeed, the whole point of it is to help the U.S. better compete with China in such manufacturing, on the understanding that the world is moving toward E.V.s and the U.S. shouldn’t cede that industry to China. But ceding the industry to China is exactly what Vance and Trump would do.
The “table scraps” gaffe matters. The GOP ticket planning to let China win — effectively ceding the future of auto manufacturing to the United States’ pre-eminent economic rival — matters more.
