Former US President Donald Trump used his nomination speech to take aim at President Joe Biden’s electric vehicle policies, vowing action against them on his first day in office.
“I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one,” Trump said in his address at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The move would result in “saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now, and saving US customers thousands and thousands of dollars per car”, he said.
While the Biden administration doesn’t have a mandate on EVs, critics of new air-pollution limits issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in March have said they would illegally force automakers to sell EVs.
Trump’s remarks on EVs came just moments before he criticised what he said was trillions of dollars of wasteful spending “having to do with the green new scam”. He said he would instead direct the money to projects like roads, bridges and dams, though it wasn’t immediately clear how he would make good on the pledge.
Disdain
Trump has made no secret his disdain for electric cars, claiming they don’t work and will benefit China and Mexico while hurting American workers. Biden, in contrast, has made the shift to battery-powered cars one of his top climate and industrial policies and has set a goal of having 50% of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. — Ari Natter, (c) 2024 Bloomberg LP