Union leaders who are familiar with the economics of climate change and subsidized electric vehicles are suddenly reticent to endorse Joe Biden for a second term.
Why is that?
Doesn’t “Lunch Bucket Joe ” operate in the best interests of “blue collar” workers, particularly those who are part of organized labor?
After adopting a “whole-of-government approach” to what Team Biden describes as the “climate crisis,” some of the president’s long-time benefactors in outfits like the United Auto Workers are hedging their bets. The implication here is that there may yet be an opportunity for Republican candidates who have prioritized American workers over U.N. climate initiatives that occupy a privileged position in the Biden White House.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which is overloaded with climate change directives that don’t exactly elevate the financial standing of union members. But the legislation is filled to the rim with government favors designed to artificially boost the market for electric vehicles. UAW President Shawn Fain drove this point home in a video message where he discussed the ramifications of political favoritism.
“There have been clear winners and losers and the same people who’ve always won, the corporate elite and the billionaire class, seem to think they can keep calling the shots,” Fain says in the video. “The ‘Big Three’ automakers, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, are taking billions of dollars in government subsidies to go electric. But those benefits aren’t trickling down to UAW members.”
Fain proceeds to tell the story of how General Motors opened an EV battery plant in Lordstown, Ohio, with the promise of well-paying “green jobs” after closing a conventional manufacturing plant. The EV plant paid a paltry $16.50 an hour, Fain explains, in comparison to the $30.00 an hour auto workers were “on track” to make at the assembly plant that was closed. That’s a steep cut all done in the name of climate change.
The dense legislative language in Biden’s “inflation reduction” plan that delves into the “requirements for the refundable income tax credit for qualifying plug-in electric vehicles” tap dances around the hard financial reality. Auto workers are paying taxes that are funneled back into the “Big Three” automakers under the guise of green energy that translate into lower wages for those same workers. Those green government kickbacks bite hard!
But it’s not just labor leaders who have become attuned to the economic fallout from climate schemes that have little or no impact on global temperatures while burdening already beleaguered taxpayers.
The American Energy Alliance, a nonprofit group that favors free market policies, recently performed a survey of 1,000 likely voters that found a substantial majority support affordable energy and oppose costly climate policies.
Where electric vehicles are concerned, voters were also asked if they would “trust the federal government to decide what kind of cars should be subsidized or mandated?” Seventy percent of respondents to the AEA survey said they would not.
On Climate, Relax Republicans
Tom Pyle, the president of AEA, has a message for Republicans who feel pressured to adopt their own version of green initiatives. He advises them to “relax” and “put their faith in free market solutions” that more closely align with the public’s priorities.
“When Republicans are told that they should be proactive on the issue of climate change, they should know that this just doesn’t show up in the data,” Pyle said.
“They are on solid ground prioritizing energy affordability over an amorphous climate agenda that proponents are not being honest about when it comes to consumers and motorists,” he added.
But what about the “climate crisis” the Biden administration incessantly invokes to rationalize their regulatory policies?
“When Republicans are told that they should be proactive on the issue of climate change, they should know that this just doesn’t show up in the data,” Pyle said.
The Heartland Institute, a free market group based in Illinois, has collected data and research available on its “climate realism” site debunking alarmist claims underpinning Biden’s green energy boondoggles.
Republican candidates who are willing to go on the offensive against Biden’s climate agenda have several avenues open to them in the form of economic and scientific realities. But there are also geopolitical implications tied in with a heightened reliance on electric vehicles.
The AEA survey informs voters that China now controls about 80 percent of the materials that go into making electric vehicles and batteries for those vehicles. The respondents are asked, “How concerned should the United States be” about China’s dominance in this area? — with 64 percent answering “very.”
Sounds like a broad cross section of American voters, including union and nonunion workers, would be receptive to any candidate challenging the Biden climate agenda.
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