President Biden wants more American cars and trucks to run on electricity, not gas. His administration has pushed that goal on multiple fronts, including strict new rules on auto emissions generous new subsidies to help American consumers get as much as $7,500 off the cost of a new electric vehicle.
Mr Biden's aides agree that electric vehicles – which retail for over $53,000 average in the United States – would sell even faster here if they were cheaper. Coincidentally there is one wave of new electric vehicles which are significantly cheaper than the products customers can currently purchase in the United States. They are proving extremely popular in Europe.
But the president and his team I don't want Americans buying these cheap cars, which retail for as little as $10,000 elsewhere because they're made in China. That's true even though a wave of cheap imported electric vehicles could help drive down car prices overall, potentially helping Mr. Biden's re-election campaign at a time when inflation remains voters' top economic concern.
Instead, the president is taking steps to make Chinese electric vehicles prohibitively expensive, largely to protect American automakers. Mr. Biden signed an executive action earlier this month that quadruples the tariffs on those cars to 100 percent.
These tariffs will put many potential Chinese imports at a significant cost disadvantage compared to electric vehicles made in America. But some models, such as the BYD Seagull discountcould still cost less than some US rivals even after tariffs, which is one reason Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and some other Democrats have called on Mr. Biden to completely ban Chinese imports of electric vehicles.
The apparent clash between climate concerns and U.S. manufacturing has upset some environmentalists and liberal economists, who say the country and the world would be better off if Mr. Biden welcomed the import of cheap, low-emissions technologies to fight climate change .
Mr. Biden and his aides reject that criticism. They say that about the president efforts to limit Chinese electric cars and other clean technology imports provide an important counterweight to Beijing's illegal and harmful trade practices.
And they emphasize that Mr. Biden's trade approach will ultimately benefit American jobs and national security — along with the planet.
These are the policy and political considerations driving Mr. Biden's effort to protect American manufacturers from Chinese competition.
Deny Beijing a new monopoly
China already dominates major clean energy production in areas such as solar cells and batteries. Mr. Biden's aides want to prevent the country from acquiring monopolies in similar industries, such as electric vehicles, for several reasons.
This includes climate problems. Government officials say Chinese factories do are powered by fossil fuels such as coalproduce more greenhouse gas emissions than U.S. power plants.
There is also a central economic reason for denying China a monopoly: ensuring that electric cars and trucks will always be available, at competitive prices. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the fragility of global supply chains, as crucial products such as semiconductors became difficult to obtain from China and other Asian countries that the United States relied on. Prices for consumer electronics and other products that relied on imported materials soared, fueling inflation.
Biden officials want to avoid a similar scenario for electric vehicles. Concentrating supply of electric vehicles and other advanced green technology in China would jeopardize “the world's collective ability to access the technologies we need to succeed in a clean energy economy,” says Ali Zaidi, Mr Biden's national climate adviser.
Strengthening national security
Biden officials say they are not trying to bring the world's entire electric vehicle supply chain to the United States. For example, they are signing deals with allies to supply minerals for advanced batteries, and encouraging countries in Europe and elsewhere to subsidize their own domestic production of clean technology. But they are particularly concerned about the security implications if a major rival like China dominates the space.
The government has launched an investigation into the risks of software and hardware of future imported smart cars – electric or otherwise – from China, which could track the locations of Americans and report them to Beijing. Liberal economists are also concerned about the prospect of China cutting off access to new cars or key parts thereof for strategic purposes.
Allowing China to dominate electric car production risks a repeat of the long-standing economic and safety challenges of gasoline cars, said Elizabeth Pancotti, the director of special initiatives at the liberal Roosevelt Institute in Washington, which leads the industrial policy effort. of Mr Biden has welcomed.
Americans have struggled for decades with the decisions of often hostile oil-producing countries, acting as part of the OPEC cartel, to curtail production and raise gasoline prices. China could wreak similar havoc on the electric car market if it pushes other countries out of the sector, she said.
If that happens, she said, “it will be very difficult to reverse that.”
Biden needs the energy transition to create jobs
There's no denying that politics also plays a big factor in Mr. Biden's decisions. Simply put, he promises that his climate program will create jobs — good-paying blue-collar jobs, including in crucial swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Mr. Biden is a staunch supporter of organized labor and is counting on union votes to help win those states. He has promised that the energy transition will give union workers a boost. He is betting that their support for tariffs aimed at protecting U.S. manufacturing jobs will overshadow the complaints of environmentalists who want faster progress on cutting emissions.
“One of the constituent groups in the Democratic Party that is really well organized and that has people knocking on doors is the labor movement, even more so than the environmental movement,” said Todd Vachon, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and the author of “Clean Air and Good Jobs: US Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice.”
These concerns have come into particular relief as many clean energy jobs are at young companies where workers are not unionized, he added.
Mr. Biden put these concerns front and center when he announced his tariff decision last week.
“In 2000, when cheap steel from China began flooding the market, American steel towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio were hit hard,” he said at the White House. “Iron workers and steelworkers in Pennsylvania and Ohio lost their jobs. I won't let that happen again.”
David Gelles contributed reporting from New York.