Hill Republicans warn of Biden’s ‘green war on cars’ to court blue-collar vote

Congressional Republicans are tapping into union concerns over President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda to court the striking autoworkers whose support he will need as he runs for a second term in the White House.

Biden is pressing for half of all new vehicle sales to be electric by 2030 through a combination of pollution rules and financial incentives. The “Big Three” automakers have embraced the transition, as has United Auto Workers, the union representing nearly 150,000 of their employees. But its embrace is conditional, and a strike that began on Sept. 15 is wrapped up in demands that union work be protected in the transition.

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The federal policy is expected to be a boon for nonunion EV companies such as Tesla that are already benefiting from substantial government subsidies and tax credits. As the legacy automakers attempt to reap that windfall themselves, pledging to spend billions on new battery plants, many in union-hostile states, the UAW wants to ensure its influence extends to those plants.

The Biden administration has promised a “just transition” to EVs, echoing the language of the UAW, but the strike has put on display a tension between the president’s pursuit of clean energy and his commitment to the unions that helped elect him. The UAW has so far withheld its endorsement of Biden’s 2024 campaign.

The strike, which has expanded to 38 plants in 20 states as of this writing, is about far more than EVs. It has as much to do with the 19% decline in members’ inflation-adjusted wages since 2008, when the union agreed to cost-cutting measures as part of a government bailout of the auto industry.

Among its demands, the UAW is asking for a 36% raise across a four-year contract, in addition to more generous benefits and a shorter workweek.

But Republicans see the conflict over EVs as a possible wedge with blue-collar voters worried about their job security. In battleground states like Michigan, home to tens of thousands of auto jobs, those anxieties could prove pivotal next year in deciding control of the White House.

At the core of Republicans’ argument is that Biden is appeasing climate activists at the expense of working families. “If you wipe out gas-powered cars, you’re going to wipe out the jobs that make them,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told the Washington Examiner.

Of course, the transition to EVs will mean new jobs for autoworkers, but conservatives point to EV assembly lines that are (purportedly) less labor-intensive than those for internal combustion cars.

The argument is not new — the party has appealed to voters in coal country for years with similar warnings, and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was famously pilloried by Republicans for stating she would put coal miners “out of business.”

But the attack line has taken on a new wrinkle as public attitudes sour on China, a rising superpower that dominates both EV development and the market for rare earth metals used in EV batteries.

Combine that with former President Donald Trump’s brand of conservative populism, and Republicans have a message tailor-made for 2023.

“He’s selling you out to China,” the former president said of Biden on Sept. 27, speaking before a group of autoworkers in Michigan. The president had joined the UAW picket line one day earlier outside of Detroit.

“You can be loyal to American labor, or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics, but you can’t really be loyal to both,” said Trump, who holds a large lead in polls as he seeks the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

For now, China is largely boxed out of the U.S. market for EVs due in part to a hefty, Trump-era tariff on Chinese-made vehicles. Biden chose to keep that tariff in place upon assuming office and has generally pursued a protectionist strategy for EVs that favors American-made cars through tax breaks and subsidies.

The president says the transition is about catching up to China so auto jobs stay in the United States, but presenting his agenda as a win-lose proposition is central to Republicans’ green energy critique.

A string of Republican politicians has visited the picket lines in a show of solidarity since the strike began. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) met with UAW workers outside the General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri, just one day after two liberal congresswomen, Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), rallied with employees there.

In Michigan, first-term congressman John James (R-MI) brought breakfast to workers on the picket line in his battleground district.

The moves represent a departure from the pro-business party of old, in which Republicans sided with management over labor. Democrats dismiss the overtures as a faux populism, citing the GOP’s lack of support for reforms in Congress that would expand collective bargaining rights.

Yet the anti-elitist tack has led to shifting political alliances on Capitol Hill as a new crop of Republicans work with progressive Democrats to sponsor legislation that would regulate everything from railroads to CEO pay.

Where populist Republicans diverge is how far to go in supporting the UAW’s demands, which include 40 hours of pay for a four-day workweek.

Hawley supports higher wages and better working conditions, while his home state colleague, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), declines to get into the UAW’s demands other than to say he hopes for a “good outcome” for workers.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Hillbilly Elegy author who won his Senate race in Ohio last year on the strength of Trump’s working-class message, says it’s less about lining up behind specific demands and more about signaling support for a group that increasingly makes up the Republican voting base.

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“Look, I think we have a real opportunity here to show that we are actually standing up for working Americans,” Vance told the Washington Examiner. “And, I mean, this should be the most sympathetic group of workers in the country — a lot of them are voting Republican. They’re making a product that’s really important.”

“To my fellow Republicans, you don’t have to endorse every single demand that the union is making,” he added. “But you got to recognize, workers are asking for a wage increase. I think it’s reasonable for them to ask for that. And they’re also signaling, like we are, real skepticism about the Biden administration’s green war on cars.”