President Biden pushed Wednesday for more spending on electric vehicle manufacturing to create new jobs, even as numerous studies say the transition to electric vehicles could cost thousands of jobs.
After touring the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where he browsed automakers’ electric vehicle portfolios, Mr. Biden unveiled a new plan to make those vehicles more accessible to consumers.
Under the proposal, the government will spend $900 million to build electric vehicle chargers across 53,000 miles of the nation’s highway system. Money for the project will come from the bipartisan infrastructure law, which cleared Congress last year and allocates $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle chargers.
The infrastructure bill is among three laws Mr. Biden championed to create an electric vehicle boom. His new climate, tax, and health care law offers a tax incentive for buying electric vehicles, and a bill to boost the manufacturing of computer chips will increase the production of electric vehicles, batteries, and chargers.
Speaking Wednesday, Mr. Biden hailed the laws, saying they will add jobs to the economy.
“We are building the future of electric vehicles. We are bringing back U.S. manufacturing jobs — 680,000 jobs just since I took office — good-paying jobs, union jobs, middle-class jobs, jobs that give you a sense of dignity and a fair shot,” Mr. Biden said.
The 680,000 manufacturing jobs Mr. Biden said were created under his watch are across all manufacturing sectors, not just automobiles, according to White House data.
Despite Mr. Biden’s bold proclamations, recent studies say the transition to electric vehicles will cost jobs because they require fewer parts and less labor.
A 2019 Morgan Stanley research note estimated electric vehicles could cost three million auto industry jobs across the globe within the next three to five years, noting that electric vehicles require 30% less labor to produce.
The Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said last year the auto industry could lose about 75,000 jobs by 2030, the year by which Mr. Biden wants half of the vehicles sold in the country to be electric. If the electric vehicle demand, which currently hovers at about 50%, were to drop by the end of the decade, the industry could lose more than 200,000 jobs.
The group said that increased government subsidies are necessary to prevent more job losses, because of the electric vehicle transition.
Mr. Biden addressed fears that longtime autoworkers could lose their jobs, vowing that anyone displaced by the switch would get the first crack at jobs building batteries and other components for electric vehicles.
“They used to be building carburetors, but you won’t be doing that much anymore with electric vehicles, but we are going to have to build an awful lot of vehicle batteries,” he said. “And the first people who get those jobs, the first people to train for those jobs, the people able to do those jobs are anybody displaced.”
Mr. Biden did not offer specifics about how the displaced workers would be trained to qualify for the new economy jobs.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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