Name: In pivotal Michigan, the electric vehicle transition jolts a Biden-Trump rematch - The Boston Globe
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In pivotal Michigan, the electric vehicle transition jolts a Biden-Trump rematch - The Boston Globe

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Trump hammered home a similar message on the threat from electric vehicles about four hours later to a frigid crowd of roughly 3,000 people in an airport hangar here. The pitch — filled with his typical falsehoods and overwhelmed by rants against his court cases — is key to Trump’s effort to swing this pivotal battleground state back to his column in November.Get Today in PoliticsA digest of the top political stories from the Globe, sent to your inbox Monday-Friday.“Michigan, you’re going to get so screwed,” Trump predicted of the electric vehicle transition, claiming without evidence that all EVs soon will be made in China. “You’re getting nice wages for a short period of time, but you’re going to be out of jobs in two years.”Trump and Biden have been looking past Tuesday’s Michigan primary, which both are expected to win handily, to the general election. And Trump has been revving up the fear at a time of great uncertainty for the US auto industry as it boosts electric vehicle production to respond to climate change and Biden’s ambitious goals to limit auto emissions. Despite government incentives, EV sales growth has slowed in recent months, and auto industry layoffs have hit Michigan.“I hate to say this, but [Trump] makes a good point” about electric vehicles, James “Jay” Walk, 71, a retired autoworker from Detroit, said as he watched the competitors warm up at a UAW bowling tournament in the Detroit suburb of Allen Park on the same Saturday as the rally. Walk supports Biden and believes most UAW members will vote for him, but he thinks the electric vehicle transition has exceeded its speed limit.“Everyone that I talk to has no desire to purchase an electric car,” he said over the sound of bowling balls scattering pins on 90 lanes. “If we want to go south to Miami or whatever, how many charging stations are going to be on I-75?”Autoworker votes are crucial in Michigan, home to an estimated 66,000 UAW members at the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler parent Stellantis — four times more than any other state. Biden won the UAW’s endorsement last month after burnishing his “Union Joe” nickname by becoming the first sitting president to appear at a picket line, joining striking autoworkers outside a GM factory in Belleville, Mich., in September.“Supporting you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” Biden told a cheering crowd of about 200 people in a UAW hall in Warren, Mich., on Feb. 1, touting the nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs the nation has added during his presidency, including about 115,000 in the auto industry. “You all are the ones that ‘brung me to the dance.’ And I never left you. I never left you.”Autoworkers stood by Biden in 2020, helping him win Michigan, one of the Democratic Party’s Blue Wall states, by 154,000 votes. Exit polls showed union households supported him by 25 points over Trump. But a Fox News poll this month showed Trump leading Biden 47 percent to 45 percent among registered voters in Michigan — and Biden’s margin in union households was just 12 points. That’s nearly identical to Hillary Clinton’s 13-point exit poll margin in the 2016 election, when Trump defeated her in the state by fewer than 11,000 votes.With many in the state’s large Arab American community angry at Biden over his support for Israel in its war with Hamas, the autoworker vote could be even more crucial for him. In a potential sign of that, the Biden administration reportedly is considering easing some of its auto emissions goals in a concession to automakers and the UAW, which would provide more time to gradually ramp up electric vehicle production and sales.“It’s a 50-50 state. It’s uber-competitive,” said David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University just north of Detroit. “Any slight shift in certain segments of the vote can have major ramifications,”Democrats know they have work to do to highlight Biden’s support for union autoworkers and what they say is Trump’s lack of it, including an appearance at a nonunion auto parts factory during last fall’s strike even as he was angling for the UAW’s endorsement.“I love Hillary Clinton. She’s my friend. She never walked into a [UAW] union hall. Ever,” Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters ahead of Trump’s Feb. 17 rally. “The UAW president and the executive committee endorsing does not mean that gets into the union halls. We have to go into every union hall … and this time, we’ve got leaders who are committed to that.”Laura Dickerson, president of the UAW region Biden visited on Feb. 1 and that hosted the bowling tournament, said Trump’s warnings about electric vehicles resonate with autoworkers at factories that have seen layoffs and jobs shifted to other plants because of slowing EV sales growth. But she added that electric vehicles are here to stay, and Biden has been working to make sure they’re built in the United States.“You can’t just turn a blind eye to them; people are driving them. Some people really like them,” Dickerson said. And workers give Biden credit for hitting the picket line with them while Trump did not, she said.“Either you’re with us, or you’re not, and he’s not with us,” Dickerson said of Trump.But Brian Pannebecker, 64, of New Baltimore, Mich., a retired Ford and Chrysler autoworker, said Trump is the one looking out for UAW members because EVs take about a third less labor to build (although additional workers are needed to make the batteries). He called the new UAW contract — which includes raises and cost of living increases that will boost pay by more than 30 percent by April 2028 — just a “sugar high” for workers whose jobs are threatened by Biden’s policies.“The autoworkers do not like the EV mandates, and they don’t like Biden trying to take credit for being ‘Blue Collar Joe’ or whatever he calls himself,” said Pannebecker, wearing a red “Auto Workers for Trump 2024″ T-shirt under a gray sweat shirt and green Army jacket as he awaited Trump’s arrival.During his speech, Trump asked how many autoworkers were in the crowd, and a smattering of hands went up. He then called Pannebecker up to the stage, instructing him to shed his layers to show his T-shirt to the crowd.“Thank you President Trump. We got your back,” Pannebecker yelled as he wriggled out of his sweat shirt. “The autoworkers are going to support this guy like we did in ‘16 [and] ‘20. We’re going to do it again in ‘24.”Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.

Trump hammered home a similar message on the threat from electric vehicles about four hours later to a frigid crowd of roughly 3,000 people in an airport hangar here. The pitch — filled with his typical falsehoods and overwhelmed by rants against his court cases — is key to Trump’s effort to swing this pivotal battleground state back to his column in November.Get Today in PoliticsA digest of the top political stories from the Globe, sent to your inbox Monday-Friday.“Michigan, you’re going to get so screwed,” Trump predicted of the electric vehicle transition, claiming without evidence that...

In pivotal Michigan, the electric vehicle transition jolts a Biden-Trump rematch - The Boston Globe

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