Former President Donald Trump slammed President Joe Biden on Tuesday over his electric vehicle push, saying his policies would destroy the American auto industry.
Trump’s comments come ahead of a planned appearance at a Michigan auto parts manufacturing plant on Wednesday evening, where he will speak to workers. On Tuesday, Biden made a brief appearance in Michigan, joining the picket line with workers from the United Auto Workers union who have been striking for nearly two weeks.
“Joe Biden’s draconian and indefensible Electric Vehicle mandate will annihilate the U.S. auto industry and cost countless thousands of autoworkers their jobs. The only thing Biden could say today that would help the striking autoworkers is to announce the immediate termination of his ridiculous mandate,” Trump said in a statement.
The Biden administration has aggressively pushed a “transition” from gas-fueled cars to electric vehicles, allocating billions of dollars toward electric vehicle manufacturing, with the goal of making electric vehicles half of all new vehicle sales nationwide by 2030.
“Anything else is just a feeble and insulting attempt to distract American labor from this vicious Biden betrayal,” Trump’s statement continued. “Crooked Joe should be ashamed to show his face before these hardworking Americans he is stabbing in the back. With Biden, it doesn’t matter what hourly wages they get, in three years there will be no autoworker jobs as they will all come out of China and other countries. With me, there will be jobs and wages like you’ve never seen before. Our economy will grow!”
Biden appeared with UAW President Shawn Fain during his visit to the picket line on Tuesday, saying that the workers should receive higher pay. Not all workers were thrilled to see Biden, with some referencing his electric vehicle push.
“He hasn’t really shown us anything. He’s giving companies all these big incentives to push towards electric vehicles and it’s going to eliminate our jobs as UAW members,” Jason Richards, a forklift operator at a Ford plant, told the Washington Free Beacon. “It takes a whole lot less people to build an electric vehicle than a gas-powered vehicle.”
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Biden announced his visit to the picket line days after Trump said he would forgo the second presidential debate to speak to auto workers in Michigan. Fain has been critical of Trump, claiming he “serves a billionaire class and that’s what’s wrong with this country.”
When previously asked about the strike, Trump, who has long been critical of the U.S. economic relationship with China, said that the workers had been “sold down the river by their leadership” and that they should support him.