Named as former President Donald Trump’s running mate this week, millennial Ohioan J.D. Vance rose to relative stardom during the pandemic. In 2020, his 2016 best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy was adapted into a film and released on Netflix. Both covered Vance’s rise from Appalachian poverty to Yale Law School. Not long after, Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate. Some say it was because of his inspiring story. Others insist it's because he went from Trump critic to Trump supporter, but kept a pro-worker, pro-middle class emphasis. For example, he supported the United Auto Workers’ strike last year and shared their desire for higher wages and better contracts, but he also said that he would have rejected the 2020 election results.
Yet, no matter how inspired you may (or may not) be by Vance’s story, his policy positions are unfriendly to electric vehicles, and he remains dismissive about the effects of climate change. If Senator Vance becomes Vice President Vance—or perhaps more than that as he emerges as the successor to 78-year-old Trump, who is limited to only one more term if he wins in November—the effects on the EV transition would be devastating for all parties involved.
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J.D Vance's Proposed Drive American Act Would Disincentivize EVs
Introduced in 2023, this bill drafted by Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is meant to boost the production of vehicles and increase American car manufacturing by taking the $7,500 tax credit from EVs, and giving it to gas and diesel-powered vehicles.
Vance’s EV antagonism came into the limelight during 2023’s well-publicized UAW strike. The senator took to X (nee Twitter) to show support for the striking workers, many of whom were Ohioans employed at the nearly dozen manufacturing plants run by Stellantis, General Motors and Ford. Considering Ohio’s historic source of labor for American automakers, this could be seen as a nonpartisan show of support for Ohio’s autoworkers. Yet, the tail end of the statement frames his support against “green” technology, citing Ford’s high EV manufacturing costs, claiming tax credits have failed to get drivers behind the wheel, and criticizing the auto manufacturer’s plans to make EVs entirely. (Of course, much of that isn’t based in fact; tax incentives have helped drive record EV adoption, and while Ford is dealing with high upfront costs, it is now America’s no. 2 EV brand behind Tesla.)
This wasn’t just a one-off quip on social media, either. Four days after those posts, Vance penned an op-ed for the Toledo Blade where he claimed that an EV future would be a surefire way to erode American jobs and wages, and enrich China. For what it’s worth, Toledo, Ohio is where all Jeep Wranglers are produced, including the Plug-in Hybrid Wrangler 4xe model—which happens to be America’s best-selling PHEV.
Vance’s piece was a direct response to a different op-ed by the same paper, which expressed concern that the EV transition would leave UAW members behind—a significant claim when some EV manufacturers seeking to build EVs in right-to-work, anti-union states or in Mexico. The Chevrolet Blazer EV and Equinox EV are made in non-union Ramos Arzipe, Mexico. Likewise, GM’s new Ultium battery production plant in Lordstown, Ohio, located down the road from its old factory that once produced Chevy Cobalts and Cruzes with union labor, was not initially a UAW plant. It only later joined the UAW after striking, with the contract ratified in early 2024. Officially at least, UAW President Shawn Fain has said that the union isn’t anti-EV; it just wants to build those cars and their components here, with American labor. The same goes for gas cars and hybrids too.
Vance clearly doesn’t see it that way. Here’s a snippet from his Op-Ed published back in September, critiquing another op-ed that advocated for the UAW to be strong in ensuring that American automaker’s EV plans include UAW workers: “Instead of leveraging this moment to steer the Biden Administration away from their obsession with EVs, the editors would have Toledo’s autoworkers resign themselves to a fate of lower wages and fewer job prospects. Make no mistake: that is what the future holds if Joe Biden’s EV folly is allowed to continue,” he wrote.
A few weeks later on October 6, 2023, Vance echoed stronger sentiments in Newsweek, insisting the U.S. auto industry faced “Death by electrification,” and that “Washington elites, beholden to special interests and radical environmental activists, downplay the destructive costs an all-EV auto industry would bring,” citing that most battery production and mineral mining is done in China, which is economically enriching someone he views as a strategic enemy. Again, this doesn’t touch on the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which are incentivizing a build-up of U.S. and North American EV and battery plants and ultimately aims to wrest control of that supply chain away from China. Vance had not been sworn into Congress when the IRA was signed into law, but every Republican in the Senate and House voted against the bill.
On its face, Vance’s critiques could just be one lone senator’s somewhat misguided advocacy based on real concerns that an EV future would lead to fewer jobs with little recompense for Americans; after all, a fear exists that since EVs need fewer parts, an electric future won’t require as many manufacturing jobs. But, in the context of the rest of Vance’s actions, this feels like too shallow of a read.
There’s no greater example of this than Vance’s Drive American Act, which is proposed legislation that would eliminate all of the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax incentives, including the $7,500 tax credit for North American-made plug-in vehicles and give it to gas and diesel ones instead. There’s an explicit carveout in the bill that excludes EVs, even if they’re made in the United States.
With legislation like that, was any of this ever really about American Jobs? Or is this a talisman of something deeper, but infinitely shallower – a culture war or of sorts? Soundbites and saber-rattling like this are really only meant to rile up a voter base that has a deeply politicized view of electric vehicles, seeing them as calling cards for the elite Democrats they feel have ruined the country within the past four years. Trump himself spewed tons of misinformation this week in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, faintly praising EVs, but also saying they’re too heavy, too expensive, while also wildly overstating the amount of money it would cost to support a future switch to EVs. In June, he promised to totally reverse the Biden Administration’s EV policies.
We reached out to both the UAW and J.D. Vance’s office, and at the time of publication neither has responded to a request for comment. However, it’s exceptionally clear that Vance doesn’t like EVs, or that if he does have any feelings about them at all, he’s still all too happy to use them as another weapon in America’s never-ending culture wars. Instead of giving support to American automakers and manufacturers to establish more battery manufacturing and mineral mining, America would be throwing the ball down and going home, incentivizing gas cars as the entire world shifts to a more electrified future.
Most pertinently, Vance’s policies would hurt UAW workers employed at existing Big Three facilities that are already in the midst of switching over to manufacturing EVs. Factories like Grand River, Hamtramack or Spring Hill; these places employ hundreds of workers that already build or will build EV parts and EVs themselves. If the support from EVs is snatched from under us like a cheap rug with no pad underneath, then the demand necessary to keep those workers employed will evaporate, and thus, those jobs will be gone. Or, we can pivot backward to gas-powered cars, creating a soon-to-be outmoded and polluting product that has been in decline since the last decade. Just look at Hyundai and Kia and their China operations. Though they’re an EV powerhouse elsewhere in the world, those two brands were slow to introduce its electrified models to China, and now they’re both saddled with excess capacity for its ICE car factories. The end result was both brands laying off hundreds of employees, and shuttering factories.
If America is going to fight against China’s global dominance in the EV realm, and it is going to get more drivers off gas and help slow climate change, then its EV industries need all the help they can get. Hammering EVs may make for good sound bites on cable news and in social media clips, but they don’t create policies that can actually help America compete in the world.
Contact the author: kevin.williams@insideevs.com
