Trump Says Electric Vehicles Will Kill Auto Jobs: Report

Donald Trump claimed in a speech on Sunday that the electric vehicle industry will decimate employment in American car manufacturing and assailed the Biden Administration for adopting tough tailpipe emission standards that will eventually push most gas-powered vehicles off the road.

The former president made the comments in a speech to the Oakland County Republicans in Oakland County, Michigan, according to The Hill.

“Driven by his ridiculous regulations, electric cars will kill more than half of U.S. auto jobs and decimate the suppliers that they decimated already — decimate the suppliers and it’s going to decimate your jobs and it’s going to decimate more than anybody else, the state of Michigan,” The Hill quoted him as saying. “It’s going to be decimation, it's going to be at a level that people can’t even imagine.”

Electric cars are not made in the U.S., but in China, he said.

EV manufacturers have built more facilities in America in recent years. Honda last year announced a factor making electric car parts near Columbus, Ohio, and Michigan lawmakers gave Ford Motor Co. $100 million last year in exchange for a pledge to create more than 3,000 jobs in EV manufacturing, according to Michigan Capital Confidential.

Michigan’s auto sector has experienced devastating job losses in past decades. The state has roughly 175,000 jobs in car manufacturing, according to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, about 37% of its peak in 1978, although carmakers have added jobs in recent years and the state’s unemployment rate has dropped.

Still, electric vehicles will require fewer factory workers.

Last year Business Insider said electric vehicle manufacturing requires roughly 40% fewer workers than traditional car manufacturing because EVs require fewer parts and, therefore, fewer people to put them together.

Electric vehicles make up a small slice of the auto market — around 1% according to JD Power — but tailpipe emission rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency in April could mean that more than two-thirds of all vehicles sold in the U.S. will be all-electric by 2032.