Mike Williams, Senior Fellow at The Center for Americna Progress, joins us to talk about the U.S. automotive industry and how the Trump administration is putting some of America’s best jobs in jeopardy by surrendering one of our largest markets to the Chinese.
RICK: But again, the thing that you've pointed out is this kind of, this is the fear I've had for our country, this kind of banana republic pendulum swing of extremes. Because look, during the Biden years, we invested in a lot of green technology. We invested a lot in battery technology. Does all that stuff just go into the dustbin?
MIKE: If we go on the trajectory that it seems like Trump wants us to? Yeah, maybe. Because the trajectory we were put on by Biden is that all of a sudden we became a big player in the future of auto manufacturing. We have for a long time been a huge player in auto manufacturing, right? And we've dealt with shocks from Japan. We've dealt with shocks from Europe, but we still are holding strong.
Auto manufacturing in the U.S. employs a lot of people. And we've had a lot of companies come here. We are now facing one of, if not the most existential crisis with auto manufacturing, and that's China. It's entrance into the market. And the only way we're going to deal with that is if we have a functioning and thriving electric vehicle manufacturing sector.
The Biden administration knew that, they put in a significant amount of investment. We became one of the biggest manufacturers of batteries in the world. We have huge facilities in Ohio, in Georgia, in Michigan, in Tennessee, that have billions of dollars of both public and private investment behind it, employing tens of thousands of people.
And then Trump comes in on day one, he's like, no more, no more, no more. And so, okay. Poof. Guess what?
A in couple of years time, everybody's going to be driving BYDs. You know what a BYD is, Rick?
RICK: Yeah.
MIKE: BYD is a Chinese made vehicle. Guess what? They're way cheaper than our cars. Guess what? They're not crappy. No, not anymore. I'm not defending how they make it. There's significant problems with that.
But if we pull away, and we get rid of the support for this industry … you're going to see a ton of Chinese cars on the road.
Long story short - if we allow this market takeover to happen - and the Trump Administration is signaling that they will allow it - then it’s going to be a catastrophe for millions of American workers.
And when we consider that even massive tariffs on these vehicles do not make them more expensive than American cars, we can expect to see them in American driveways very soon. I just hope they’re roomy enough so we can take all of our neighbors to the unemployment office, and then maybe the food bank.
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