Biden At Risk Of Losing Key Supporter Over Climate Rule
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The Biden administration proposed new climate regulations that would make two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks that are sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.
The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date, two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.
The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his “horseless carriage” for a test run and changed American life and industry.
If the two rules from the Environmental Protection Agency are enacted as proposed, they would put the world’s largest economy on track to slash its planet-warming emissions at the pace that scientists say is required of all nations in order to avert the most devastating impacts of climate change.
The government’s challenge to automakers is monumental. Last year, all-electric vehicles accounted for just 5.8 percent of new cars sold in the United States. All-electric trucks were even more rare, making up fewer than 2 percent of new heavy trucks sold.
They have faced backlash over the rule.
Some of those upset are former supporters of Joe Biden and the Democrat party.
The Washington Free Beacon reported:
President Joe Biden’s plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles is facing intense backlash from a surprising array of groups, including a historically liberal labor union, a powerful trade group, and moderate Democratic voters.
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Biden in April unveiled new environmental regulations that effectively force U.S. automakers to ensure two-thirds of the vehicles they sell are electric by 2032, and the United Auto Workers—a longtime force in Democratic politics that endorsed Biden in 2020—is not happy. The union’s new president, Shawn Fain, is concerned that the push will prompt job loss in the auto industry, as electric vehicles require fewer parts and thus fewer workers to build. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents the world’s top automakers, agrees with the union—its leaders in comments sent to Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency said the regulations are “neither reasonable nor achievable” and would prompt huge price hikes.
A lack of support from the same groups that helped send Biden to the White House could bring major challenges to the Democrat’s reelection campaign. The United Auto Workers in 2020 endorsed Biden and spent millions of dollars to elect Democrats. Roughly a third of the union’s rank-and-file members, however, voted for former president Donald Trump over Biden, and there’s good reason to believe a wide array of United Auto Workers disapprove of the administration’s electric vehicle rule.
That’s because nearly 60 percent of Americans oppose phasing out the production of gas-powered cars and trucks, according to a Pew Research Center poll published Wednesday. Just 40 percent of the public, meanwhile, supports such a policy—that figure was 7 percentage points higher two years ago. Moderate and conservative Democrats are also split on the issue, with just 53 percent favoring a gas-powered vehicle purge, compared with 76 percent of liberals. In general, only 21 percent of Americans say they would feel “excited” if gas-powered vehicles were phased out, while 45 percent say they would feel “upset.”
For the United Auto Workers, Biden’s “electric vehicle transition” is so troubling that the union is holding off on endorsing the Democrat’s reelection bid, a stunning development given its status as a staunch Democratic Party ally.
This is bad news for Biden’s re-election chances.
