When former President Donald J. Trump made a September campaign stop in Flint, Mich., he warned that the shift toward electric vehicles could allow China to dominate the automotive industry that built that city and others in Michigan.
When Vice President Kamala Harris spoke in that same arena a few weeks later, she, too, talked about cars, pledging to invest in American-made advanced batteries and electric vehicles.
Across the seven battleground states most likely to decide the presidential election, the biggest issues are largely the same: the economy, immigration, abortion and democracy. But in closely divided Michigan, the center of the U.S. auto industry, the candidates’ divergent views on electric vehicles are also on the list, popping up in voter interviews and TV commercials.
In pitching their plans directly to the state’s thousands of autoworkers, Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris have each cast their policies as a salve for the industry, and portrayed their opponent’s ideas as something approaching an existential threat. Beyond the campaign rhetoric, though, are two sharply clashing visions about the future of Michigan’s signature industry and the role that government should play.
To Ms. Harris, it is clear that electric cars are a significant part of the world’s future, that the Detroit automakers need to be competitive and that the federal government should nudge them in that direction. As Mr. Trump sees it, customer demand should dictate whether companies make electric vehicles, and federal efforts to increase production are a mistake that could strengthen China and hurt American workers.
Booms and Busts
Michigan’s fate has been intertwined with the auto industry’s for more than a century. It was in this state where Henry Ford perfected the moving assembly line, where General Motors grew up and where European immigrants and people from the South moved, seeking difficult but good-paying jobs building the Ford Model T or Chevrolet Corvair.
But after decades of prosperity that brought money and rapid development, overseas competition began to challenge Michigan automakers around the 1970s. Factories closed, populations declined and the state struggled. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in the 1990s, has been blamed by many autoworkers for shifting production to Mexico. By 2009, Chrysler was in bankruptcy and the federal government was bailing out General Motors.
The industry has stabilized since.
Last year, after a wave of strikes, members of the United Auto Workers ratified contracts that secured large raises for members. And though the three big automakers of Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the new parent company of Chrysler, employ fewer people in Michigan than they once did, they still have an estimated 66,000 U.A.W. employees in the state, according to one 2023 study, more than four times as many as any other state.
But the industry is changing. Electric manufacturers like Tesla — whose chief executive, Elon Musk, supports Mr. Trump — are gaining popularity in the country, while Chinese carmakers are growing their market share abroad. Around Michigan, there is a widespread sense that a new period of uncertainty is taking hold.
Clashing Policies
President Biden’s administration has made an economic and environmental case for producing more electric vehicles and, over time, making fewer vehicles with gas-powered internal combustion engines. This year, the administration set a goal of most new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States being all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
As Democrats see it, the global auto industry is already shifting in that direction, the Detroit automakers needed to catch up and the government can help them do it. Gas-powered vehicles are also a major contributor to climate change, and building more electric cars could help reduce emissions.
The administration’s approach has been a mix of carrots and sticks. They have set future caps on tailpipe emissions, while also encouraging the domestic growth of electric vehicle suppliers and awarding funds to help the Big Three transition some of their factories.
But Ms. Harris and other Democrats recoil at the idea that there is anything approaching an “E.V. mandate,” a popular Republican claim in the presidential race. During a recent trip to Michigan, the vice president said that she would “never tell you what kind of car you have to drive.”
Republicans are advancing a different case, speaking with concern about how much the electric vehicle supply chain relies on cobalt and battery cells from China, and questioning the wisdom of pushing the American auto industry to transform itself. In a recent speech outside Saginaw, where many General Motors plants closed decades ago, Mr. Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, spoke ominously of what would happen to remaining auto jobs during a Harris presidency.
“Kamala Harris’s obsession with electric vehicles and forcing Americans to buy Chinese-made electric vehicles is going to destroy the Michigan auto industry,” Mr. Vance asserted in his speech, despite Ms. Harris’s statements that she would not force anyone to buy an electric car.
When, in another Michigan trip, Mr. Vance referred to federal funds to build electric cars at a Lansing plant as “table scraps,” the Harris campaign seized on the issue and told voters that it was actually the Republican ticket that would be a threat to the auto industry.
“I will always have your back, and we’ll keep fighting to make sure that you keep your jobs right here in Lansing, and keep these most noble and important jobs for America’s strength,” Ms. Harris said soon thereafter in a U.A.W. hall in the city.
The U.A.W. vs. Auto Workers for Trump
The candidates’ debate over electric vehicles has animated an already brewing fight for the support of autoworkers, a blue-collar and traditionally Democratic constituency that both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump yearn to claim.
Though the U.A.W. endorsed Ms. Harris and has helped with her ground game in Michigan, many rank-and-file members have publicly bucked the union and voiced support for Mr. Trump.
Brian Pannebecker, a U.A.W. retiree and the founder of a group called Auto Workers for Trump, has been a regular presence at Trump events and has held frequent rallies of his own outside car factories in the Detroit area. He believes this will be a year when many U.A.W. members vote for Republicans, and he said skepticism of Ms. Harris’s approach to electric vehicles was pushing them in that direction.
“In a capitalist economy, do the politicians tell companies what to build? No, that’s called a socialist economy,” Mr. Pannebecker said during a recent rally outside a Stellantis factory in Sterling Heights, a Detroit suburb, as truck drivers and other passers-by honked in support.
While U.A.W. leaders acknowledge a divide among the rank and file, they are projecting confidence that their message, and Ms. Harris’s message, is resonating with many union members.
Ben Frantz, the president of U.A.W. Local 652, which represents workers at the Lansing factory that is slated to be converted to making electric cars, said it struck a nerve when Mr. Vance called the funds to convert that factory “table scraps.”
“They talk about General Motors as if it’s some kind of conglomerate. It’s people,” he said. “And for Lansing, it’s several thousand people, and that matters. So to talk about table scraps, inconsequential — it’s rude.”
But voter opinion on the issue could help Republicans. A recent New York Times/Siena College Poll found that 55 percent of Michigan likely voters opposed requiring automakers to expand electric vehicle manufacturing, while 39 percent said they would support such a policy.
The post The Candidates Keep Talking About Electric Cars in Michigan. Here’s Why. appeared first on New York Times.
