ANDY SCHOR
(The writer is the Democratic mayor of Lansing.)
With all the ridiculous things he’s said, it might have been easy to miss that Donald Trump actually did lay out his plan for the future of the auto industry in America.
It goes like this: first, Trump will pull the rug out from under American manufacturing of electric vehicles and their supply chains and sacrifice American jobs. Instead of competing to win the race for the future of auto manufacturing, Trump would simply forfeit it to the Chinese government.
For a specific example, we need look no further than Lansing, where Trump, Vance and Mike Rogers have all suggested they would cancel a Biden-Harris $500 million grant to give GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant new life building EVs — with Vance calling this lifeline “table scraps.”
Then, as Trump has repeatedly said, he will simply allow China to come in and build as many auto manufacturing plants as they want here in America.
If you’re thinking this is crazy, you’re right. But this wasn’t some one-time errant statement from Trump. He said it to reporters before the Republican convention: “Trump invites Chinese automakers to build cars in the U.S.,” said the Fortune headline. Then he said it during his convention speech.
Then he said it again here in Michigan just a few weeks ago. As the Detroit Free Press reported, “Trump also argued that he’s actually OK with China or other countries’ companies making vehicles for the U.S. market as long as the manufacturing plants are located in the U.S.”
If this isn’t already making you shudder, remember this: the Chinese government doesn’t do unions, and they aren’t exactly known for paying a good wage. This would make Trump the biggest union-buster, the biggest scab, that American workers have ever known.
That’s not the policy of somebody who cares about American workers, it’s the policy of a billionaire working for the billionaire class. It’s the policy of somebody who says, “I hated to give overtime, I hated it. I’d get other people — I shouldn’t say this, but I’d get other people in. I wouldn’t pay, I hated it.”
A lot of workers have worried about what the global shift toward electric vehicles and hybrids would mean for them, and that’s understandable. I believe people should have as many choices as possible in what they drive, and as part of the choice, we need to have the infrastructure available. That’s why we will make the batteries and the cars here in Lansing, and why we’ll install charging infrastructure that’s also made in America. That way those who choose to have EV’s can have them. And those who don’t can drive internal combustion cars.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have invested in the future of Michigan manufacturing in the White House and have stood with UAW workers on the picket line, ensuring that the next generation of auto manufacturing would be made in America, with UAW workers at the forefront and with priority given to existing plants and workers.
Meanwhile, a new University of Michigan study finds that, counter to some early predictions about robot-built EVs, electric vehicle manufacturing has actually required a larger workforce than internal combustion engine vehicles.
None of this means that maintaining American leadership in the auto industry will be easy. But when we fight, we win, just as the UAW did in their strike last year. Since Biden and Harris enacted their clean energy investments in 2022, Michigan has seen 18,000 jobs announced in the EV industry from almost 50 different new projects.
That’s a real plan for maintaining Lansing and Michigan’s place as the leader of the global auto industry for another generation. And it is a direct contrast with the nonsensical Trump plan to cede the future to China with non-union Chinese plants in America, presumably scattered across anti-union states. We need to stand with Harris, who will fight with us, and not with the man who would try to crush the union that built the middle class.
