Electric cars are the latest battleground between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who are already revving the engines of their respective election campaigns ahead of November's presidential elections. Yesterday, the White House announced a new package with the toughest restrictions ever to reduce emissions from cars and trucks. The objective is twofold: to accelerate the automotive transition to electric vehicles and to mitigate the impact of climate change. Biden's push for transportation electrification is nothing new. The American president has repeatedly reiterated the need to accelerate investments in electric vehicles, if only to keep pace with the two other major economic powers: China, which is currently the undisputed leader in the sector, and l The European Union, which recently adopted new regulations aimed at phasing out all gasoline and diesel vehicles. Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked electric cars, often calling them a threat to the American economy, does not see things the same way.
Biden's new rules
The new rules announced yesterday by the Biden administration provide that, by 2032, 56% of new cars sold must be electric and 13% plug-in hybrids. Thus, estimates the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), emissions from the sector are expected to decrease by 7 billion tons over the next three decades, while positive economic impacts will be equal to approximately $100 billion per year. “You have my word: American workers will lead the world in producing cars, each one branded 'Made in America,'” Biden promised yesterday as he announced the new auto emissions package. The set of restrictions announced by Biden effectively follows the path set by the European Union, which last year introduced a new regulation banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles from 2035. The new American rules are certainly less ambitious and more flexible than the European ones, but they will nevertheless give a decisive impetus to the transition of the automobile sector towards electric vehicles.
Trump's violent language
While one candidate promises to increase production of electric cars, the other pledges to do the exact opposite. In recent months, Trump has repeatedly attacked electric vehicles using increasingly violent language, as also reconstructed in an article from New York Times. According to the former president, electric cars will “kill” the American auto industry and leave thousands of workers unemployed in the Midwest states, where the main production plants of automakers are now located. Last year, in a Christmas video message, Trump went so far as to wish supporters of the “electric car madness” to “rot in hell.”
The Battle for Midwest Votes
The clashes between Trump and Biden over electric cars reflect two very different visions of how to manage the American economy. But in the background there is also something else: the battle for votes from the industrial Midwest, where some of the Swing States which will decide the next presidential elections: from Illinois to Michigan, the vital center of American automobile production. These days, Joe Biden is campaigning in Wisconsin, relaunching the good results of his economic recipe andInflation Reduction Act, the maxi-investment package approved by Congress last year. Trump, for his part, is trying to regain favor with this pool of potential voters from big industry in the Midwest, the same one that allowed him to overtake Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections and land in the White House.
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