ICYMI: Lansing Mayor Andy Schor: Trump would forfeit America’s auto industry future
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Washington, DC — Today, Lansing City Pulse published a new op-ed by Lansing Mayor Andy Schor on how, if re-elected, Trump would forfeit America’s auto industry future. Mayor Schor outlines how the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy investments have sparked a boom in good-paying clean energy jobs, with 18,000 EV jobs announced in Michigan. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly promised to cede America’s auto leadership to China, destroying these jobs, many of which are represented by the United Auto Workers.
Bizarrely, while he would crush the American EV industry, Trump is also welcoming Chinese EV companies to build their factories here, and as Mayor Schor notes: “the Chinese government doesn’t do unions, and they aren’t exactly known for paying a good wage. This would make Trump the biggest union-buster, the biggest scab, that American workers have ever known.”
Lansing City Pulse: Trump’s plan for forfeiting America’s auto industry future
In his op-ed, Mayor Schor makes it clear that a second Trump presidency threatens Michigan’s auto industry:
“With all the ridiculous things he’s said, it might have been easy to miss that Donald Trump actually did lay out his plan for the future of the auto industry in America.”
“It goes like this: first, Trump will pull the rug out from under American manufacturing of electric vehicles and their supply chains and sacrifice American jobs. Instead of competing to win the race for the future of auto manufacturing, Trump would simply forfeit it to the Chinese government.”
“For a specific example, we need look no further than Lansing, where Trump, Vance and Mike Rogers have all suggested they would cancel a Biden-Harris $500 million grant to give GM’s Lansing Grand River Assembly plant new life building EVs — with Vance calling this lifeline ‘table scraps.’”
In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has invested in the future of Michigan auto manufacturing:
“President Biden and Vice President Harris have invested in the future of Michigan manufacturing in the White House and have stood with UAW workers on the picket line, ensuring that the next generation of auto manufacturing would be made in America, with UAW workers at the forefront and with priority given to existing plants and workers.”
“Meanwhile, a new University of Michigan study finds that, counter to some early predictions about robot-built EVs, electric vehicle manufacturing has actually required a larger workforce than internal combustion engine vehicles.”
“That’s a real plan for maintaining Lansing and Michigan’s place as the leader of the global auto industry for another generation. And it is a direct contrast with the nonsensical Trump plan to cede the future to China with non-union Chinese plants in America, presumably scattered across anti-union states. We need to stand with Harris, who will fight with us, and not with the man who would try to crush the union that built the middle class.”