ICYMI: The Detroit News: EV and battery investments boosted GOP districts. Under Trump, it’s going away

Washington, DC – Reporting from the Detroit News reveals that congressional Republicans voted to slash funding for the clean energy projects that they once celebrated. These projects would have brought jobs and lowered prices for their own constituents, but instead, Republicans chose their allegiance to Donald Trump over their promises to the American people. 

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to bring back American manufacturing. Almost a year into his presidency, Americans are facing a steady drumbeat of factory closures, and Republicans are rubber-stamping his devastating policies. In the last two months alone, Michigan has seen the cancellation of six clean energy projects, killing thousands of good-paying jobs. A report from Climate Power revealed that over 158,000 jobs across the country have already been lost or stalled in the clean energy sector under Trump’s watch, 47% of which are in Republican districts. Meanwhile, China has been more than happy to step in to fill the gap left by Trump’s reckless energy policies, with Chinese electric vehicle sales “booming.” 

The Detroit News: EV and battery investments boosted GOP districts. Under Trump, it’s going away

Congressional Republicans opposed sweeping electric vehicle and battery incentives passed under former President Joe Biden, but many praised the individual projects they funded — welcoming new jobs to their districts, hailing developments in press releases and attending ground-breaking ceremonies. 

Now, though, many of those same projects supported by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act are under threat.

Amid dramatic policy shifts under President Donald Trump and shaky consumer demand, almost $23 billion worth of EV and battery projects have been canceled this year alone, involving more than 30,000 jobs, with 76% of those scrapped investments located in Republican districts, according to Atlas Public Policy, a Washington, D.C., data and policy research firm. Others are being downsized or delayed. And the pace of new investments has stalled since Trump’s election, according to E2, a nonpartisan business group focused on energy and the environment.

“It’s a self-inflicted wound by our leadership in Washington,” said Bob Keefe, executive director of E2. “This is an industry that just had left the starting line and was roaring down the track, and all of a sudden, unfortunately, it’s facing hurdles and roadblocks that are tough to manage.” 

Billions of dollars for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing — along with thousands of promised jobs — flowed to congressional districts represented by Republicans after the IRA’s passage, spurred on by the new federal grants, loans and tax credits. In the last three years, well over 60% of new battery and clean vehicle projects went to these GOP-controlled districts, according to E2 data. The same trends held for clean energy projects more broadly.

The current flurry of cancellations follows the passage of the GOP-backed One Big Beautiful Bill Act and other major policy changes pushed by the president. Trump has described moving from gas cars to EVs as “a transition to hell,” and labeled tax credits supporting such green energy projects a “giant scam.”

His signature tax and spending legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, strips several key supports for EVs, including the $7,500 tax credit for buying or leasing, which is expected to sharply reduce customer demand over the coming months. Meanwhile, Trump’s Department of Energy recently said it would cancel a number of major grants for EV, battery and other clean energy manufacturing projects, hitting both Democratic and Republican districts.

Three House Republicans representing districts with four combined EV battery gigafactories — stretching from Marshall, Michigan, south to Bowling Green, Kentucky — voted in favor of Trump’s big bill, despite getting among the largest total EV investments of anywhere in the country. These plants and many others, as The Detroit News previously reported, are trying to navigate an increasingly uncertain future, in some cases pausing construction and hunting for new customers beyond the auto industry. 

Plenty of GOP lawmakers and other conservative leaders, like state governors, have publicly supported the projects in the past. But now they are carefully navigating a party and president who have taken a hard line against EVs. 

U.S. Rep. Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, represents a district encompassing two massive battery plants at different stages of completion. He celebrated their arrival and the jobs they would bring, noting in 2022 his area was “becoming an EV battery corridor and a leader in manufacturing this technology.”

He, at times, has raised concerns with EVs and the level of subsidies plants received, and other times indicated more support was needed. His office didn’t respond to questions about ending the tax credit and other moves to cut support for EVs. 

U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, a Republican who represents the Kokomo, Indiana, area, where a large EV battery project is partially built, in 2022 signed onto a congressional letter to the DOE endorsing the project, and the agency later approved a $7.5 billion loan for it. Her office didn’t respond to questions about ending the tax credit and other federal support for the project.  

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican who represents the large Ford Motor Co. battery plant in Marshall that remains under construction, has in the past both celebrated the new jobs but also raised serious concerns with the project’s ties to the Chinese firm — CATL, or Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. — licensing battery technology to Ford. His office declined to comment on the project’s current status or on how he views the future for EVs in the United States with less government support. 

In letters sent before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed over the summer, some Republicans whose districts had benefited from the IRA’s clean energy tax breaks had flagged concerns about cutting them. But the legislation ultimately passed with overwhelming GOP support in both chambers.

“The state politics of this are really complicated,” especially with the midterm elections coming up, said Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan professor emeritus in political science who studies environmental policy. 

On one hand, he said, “most congressional districts are in such safe territory, it’s hard to see any partisan shift of control in them.” Yet there are GOP-controlled House districts that have seen broad benefits from clean energy investments where “this really could be a factor.” 

Rabe said Republican politicians — especially in safe districts — will be wary of saying anything positive about EVs or other clean energy technologies that could invite backlash from the White House, and perhaps attract a primary challenger backed by Trump. 

Even as Republicans on the national stage have fully turned against EVs, it’s been a different story on the state and local level. Several red-state governors, for instance, have fully embraced the EV manufacturing industry over the last couple of years, with their economic development agencies shelling out hundreds of millions to attract new projects.

“The Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, has said he wants to be the electric mobility capital of the world,” said E2’s Keefe — and he just might succeed if the Republican governors of nearby South Carolina or Tennessee don’t “beat him to it.” 

“These governors and the elected officials that represent these areas are all about bringing jobs and opportunity and investments to their states and regions,” Keefe added, “and unfortunately they’re being thwarted by their party leadership in Washington.”

In Hardin County, Kentucky, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the last election, local leaders say the community has been largely receptive to Ford’s massive new BlueOval SK battery plant.

And in Kokomo, Republican Mayor Tyler Moore recently recalled the full-court press that local and state officials used to attract what turned into a $6.3 billion, 2,800-job commitment from battery maker StarPlus Energy. Even then-Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican, had shown up in town to personally make the case to company officials, the mayor said, as Indiana sought to beat out neighboring states, including Michigan, vying for the investment. 

Moore said he and other local leaders, knowing the potential impacts on the new battery plant, had more recently reached out to Spartz and other members of Congress to try to save the EV tax credit. The effort failed when the credits ended Sept. 30.

“At the local level, political lines need to be blurred,” Moore said. “On the federal level, if there’s a movement that’s more liberal or Democratic-leaning in nature that’s going to benefit our workforce here — and because we’ve got such a strong union presence and such — why would I, as a local Republican mayor, do anything that’s going to jeopardize (that)?”

The Trump administration continues to target EV and other clean energy subsidies that were approved under former President Biden. The latest example is DOE confirmation that it has terminated funding awards for 223 such projects totaling $7.5 billion. A DOE-provided list shows the grants cover everything from hydrogen and fuel cell projects, to university research efforts, to EV advocacy and research. One federal official posted that the moves were to stop “Green New Scam” funding that is fueling “the Left’s climate agenda,” and the cuts were targeting blue states. 

A planning document obtained by The News indicated cancellations also might affect $800 million in grants for Michigan, including a $500 million grant for General Motors Co.’s Lansing Grand River Assembly Plant to convert to EV production.

The area is represented by U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, a Charlotte Republican, who said he’d been in touch with the automaker and the Trump administration about it. Last month, he said his “top priority will always be standing with the auto workers and ensuring tax dollars are spent effectively as we unwind the Biden EV mandates that tied the hands of our auto industry and stifled our manufacturing economy.”

Barrett praised GM’s move to keep making the next-generation gas-powered Cadillac CT5 at the plant — reversing, for now, its EV conversion plans. GM recently acknowledged that a gas-powered vehicle wouldn’t qualify for the conversion grant.

Lists have circulated showing more widespread DOE grants in line for cancellation, potentially affecting EV, battery, and other clean energy projects, including across a number of red states. DOE officials have not yet confirmed all of the projects will ultimately be cut off.

In an interview on CNN last month, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright called many of the grants “an incredible, irresponsible deployment of taxpayer money,” and pledged not only to target Democrat-led states. A review continues, he said, and “more project (cancellation) announcements will come.”