Biden Marches With Autoworkers While Causing Their Problems

President Joe Biden addresses striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union at a picket line outside a General Motors service parts operations plant in Belleville, Mich., on Sept. 16, 2023. Meanwhile, his administration's electric vehicle mandates and anti-fossil fuels policies are hurting those very same autoworkers. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Commentary

President Joe Biden showed “solidarity” with striking United Auto Workers (UAW) by joining them on the picket line near Detroit on Sept. 26—one day before former President Donald Trump would deliver remarks to an audience of current and former union members at an auto parts manufacturer, also in Michigan.

The UAW is demanding a 35 percent hike in pay and benefits over four years, as well as automatic cost-of-living adjustments, just like in the 1970s, along with a four-day workweek.

The inflationary 1970s are calling President Biden, and they want their benefits back—with a post-COVID-19 four-day twist.

According to news reports, President Biden told workers, “You should be doing incredibly well.” But he has singlehandedly, through the power of his executive branch, caused them to face job losses and higher inflation.

By changing his policies, President Biden could address some of the fundamental reasons for their strike; namely, job loss because of mandatory vehicle electrification and higher inflation resulting from his war on fossil fuels, resulting in higher energy costs.

Both were imposed by the executive branch without support from even the Democratic Congress in place during President Biden’s first two years in office.

Proposed regulations on automobile emissions from the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation would require electric vehicles to make up 60 percent of new car sales by 2030 and 66 percent by 2032, compared to fewer than 6 percent in 2022—all for practically no environmental benefit.

That will adversely affect new-car purchasers, who will no longer have the choice of buying gasoline-powered vehicles, as well as those who make and support those vehicles.

Drivers who like electric vehicles (EV), primarily upper-income households in urban areas, are in luck. But those who prefer gasoline-powered cars will see increases in their costs, both for new and used cars, and UAW employees will lose jobs.

The job loss is old news. Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Farley said last November, “It takes 40 percent less labor to make an electric car.” That would be 200,000 fewer jobs in 2030 and 400,000 fewer in the long run. The UAW had time to take that information into account during pre-strike contract negotiations.

New jobs in EVs and batteries for those vehicles are being created through federal Inflation Reduction Act funding, but those jobs are in right-to-work states, where wages are lower and workers don’t have to join a union as a condition of employment.

Hyundai and LG are receiving subsidies for a $4 billion battery plant in Georgia, and Ford and Envision are spending a combined $8 billion on three battery plants in Kentucky.

Chinese workers are also winners because the Chinese Communist Party owns a substantial share of the minerals required for EV batteries, such as lithium, graphite, and cobalt. Beijing is buying mines in Africa for minerals and setting up factories in Indonesia to avoid potential bans on Chinese imports.

The move from gasoline-powered engines to EVs also affects auto parts suppliers, such as Delphi, which describes itself as the “global aftermarket leader” with “quality parts and diagnostics you can depend on.”

Auto parts employees will also lose jobs because EVs have fewer parts, and electrical components are likely to come from abroad.

Auto mechanics will be affected because EV owners can’t go to their local gas stations for service. Teslas and other EVs need to go back to the dealers for servicing.

Just 6 percent of new vehicles sold in 2022 were EVs because Americans prefer vehicles with some gasoline-powered engine, either regular or hybrid.

The bestselling vehicle in the United States is the Ford F-150 pickup truck, with other pickup trucks and SUVs not far behind. The move to 60 percent of sales for EVs by 2030 and 66 percent just two years later in 2032, with an end to gasoline-powered car sales in 2035, is due to pressure from the Biden administration.

In addition to the prospect of job losses, Americans are seeing inflation, which is driving the UAW’s wage demands of a 35 percent increase over four years. Energy was the largest component of August’s uptick in inflation. President Biden came into office with a promise to end fossil fuels, and he’s trying to fulfill his promise, so it should be no surprise that energy costs are rising.

President Biden signaled to oil companies that future investments were uncertain and unwanted. Without congressional action, he ended construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, raised lease fees and royalties on federal lands, designated large swaths of federal lands off-limits to oil exploration, and ended previously agreed-upon leases in Alaska.

In addition, the Biden administration is slowing pipeline construction, and America needs pipelines to bring more oil and natural gas from where it’s produced to domestic businesses and consumers, and for overseas export.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is now for the first time including potential greenhouse gases and effects on “environmental justice communities” in its pipeline-approval process.

Other federal agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, are cutting off funding for pipelines by requiring companies to report the climate effects of their investments. Banks that lend for fossil fuel projects, including pipelines, and companies that produce their components are likely to face heightened regulatory scrutiny. (Meanwhile, President Biden has begged Venezuela to sell to America heavy crude, this time coming to U.S. refineries by tankers rather than pipeline.)

The green agenda is driving the UAW to strike, because banning the internal-combustion engine is equivalent to banning auto jobs.

The coalition of green environmentalists and blue-collar workers is fracturing, with green policies disproportionately affecting the blues. President Biden’s visit to the picket line gives the blues the opportunity to tell their concerns to the president in person.

EV mandates and high energy prices from the president whom the UAW campaigned for and helped elect are leading to shrinking worker incomes. That should be the message from the UAW to the president today.

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.