Joe Biden's EV push vs. Ruy Teixeira's strawman arguments

Biden's multi-faceted strategy to deal with the complex challenges of both climate change and Chinese economic competition stands in stark contrast to the simplistic attacks leveled against it.

Today at the Washington Monthly I explore how a recent World Trade Organization complaint from China about American electric vehicle (EV) subsidies can help President Joe Biden counter attacks from Donald Trump.

The former president incoherently argues that the push towards American-made EVs is bad because no one wants them...and we should dramatically jack up tariffs on Chinese-made EVs so no one who wants them can buy them.

China's displeasure at Biden's support for EVs helps expose Trump's contradiction.

The WTO complaint shows that Biden's policies–which go beyond subsidies and include new emission standards, investment in charging infrastructure, and continuing Trump's 25 percentage-point increase on tariffs on Chinese-made cars–pose a real threat, not to the American auto industry, but to China's.

Biden's multi-faceted strategy to deal with the complex challenges of both climate change and Chinese economic competition stands in stark contrast to the simplistic attacks leveled not just by Trump, but by Ruy Teixeira, the political scientist and American Enterprise Institute fellow who has relentlessly criticized the Biden-era Democratic Party as too beholden to the far left.

I'll explain why that matters, but first, here's what's leading the Washington Monthly website:

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In my column, I briefly mention that Teixeira has written "that Biden’s support for electric vehicles was his political 'Achilles’ Heel,' citing Pew Research Center survey data showing '59 percent oppose a 2035 limit on new gasoline cars and trucks' and only 15 percent are very likely to 'seriously consider' purchasing an electric vehicle for their next car."

It so happens that in his own newsletter yesterday, Teixeira reiterated his argument: "working-class voters do not share Democratic elites’ zeal for restructuring the economy around 'green' industries and a clean energy transition based around wind, solar and electric vehicles which underpins much of the Democrats’ new industrial strategy. Working-class voters are much more pragmatic and will judge this strategy not by its greenness but by its concrete effects on their lives."

Teixeira also warned Democrats that without permitting reform we won't be able to quickly build the needed infrastructure to support a clean energy economy that's affordable for most Americans. And he laments that Senator Joe Manchin's permitting reform plan fizzled in Congress.

That's a fair point, but he misplaces the blame. "Democrats seem more interested in spending money than changing this situation," he wrote, without mentioning that the votes to filibuster the Manchin plan came from 37 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

Sure, the politics of clean energy are challenging. And sure, working-class voters care more about direct economic impact than abstract "greenness." But how to translate that into policy is not so simple.

Teixeira operates on the premise that Biden is blinded by "Democratic elites’ zeal" for green policies. But that's not the only reason to support the transition to EVs.

Working-class voters might not care about climate policy, but they might care about the American auto industry being decimated by their Chinese counterparts who could well dominate the rapidly growing global EV market with cars that are both well-designed and inexpensive.

One could argue, as Dylan Matthews does in Vox, that Biden should lift the tariffs on China, not only to help combat climate change by increasing access to EVs, but also so that working-class Americans will have access to affordable cars: "Barriers to importing cheap cars make inflation worse and reduce the real incomes of the middle class."

Biden, however, takes the view that we can address climate change without suffering a massive economic disruption from a collapse of the American auto industry. So he has kept Trump's tariffs in place while also backing EV tax credits, car charging stations, and higher emission standards.

Will it be politically challenging to communicate the value of those policies to swing voters? Of course! It is also politically challenging for Biden to greenlight select oil drilling projects and support fracking because it risks depressing Democratic base voters. And failing to help American automakers compete with China could cause plenty of political problems in later years.

Governing is hard! Energy policy is especially hard!

But Biden is admirably trying to navigate the political thicket with a range of interconnected policies designed to move us toward a clean energy economy without severe economic disruptions.

Trump and his fellow Republicans will continue to distort Biden's record and demagogue the issue. They don't need any help from think tank fellows.

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Best,

Bill Scher, Washington Monthly politics editor