Former President Donald Trump promises to save the US auto industry from President Joe Biden's electric vehicle (EV) mandate in his speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC).
During his RNC speech Thursday evening, Trump promised to “end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, saving the American auto industry from complete elimination, which is happening right now, and saving thousands and thousands of dollars per car to American customers.”
Trump mentioned that China wants to build manufacturing plants in Mexico to produce electric vehicles that they then want to sell to the US market without tariffs. United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain, who supported Biden in the election, should be fired as a result, Trump said:
The United Auto Workers should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen and the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately and all auto workers, union and non-union, should vote for Donald Trump. because we're going to get auto manufacturing back, and we're going to get it back fast. [Emphasis added]
Trump said he would threaten tariffs on automakers that close U.S. plants only to outsource auto jobs overseas while selling their cars in the U.S. market.
“[China is] build some of the biggest plants in the world… we'll get it back. We don't care what happens, those plants are going to be in the United States and our people are going to run those plants,” Trump said. “And if they don't agree with us, we're going to put a tariff of about 100 to 200 percent on every car and they cannot be sold in the United States.”
“We've been taken advantage of by other countries for a long time, often considered our allies,” Trump continued. “We lose jobs and income, they win everything and take our business out, take out our people. I stopped it four years ago and I'm going to stop it again … we're not going to let countries come in and take our jobs and loot our nation.”
In March, Biden issued an executive order to begin phasing out gas-powered cars and requiring most new cars sold in the U.S. market to be electric or hybrid vehicles by 2032.
The electric vehicle mandate threatens to eliminate millions of American auto jobs, as electric vehicles require far less labor to produce compared to gas cars. Similarly, the materials needed to make electric vehicle batteries come mainly from China.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.