Short of a miraculous resurrection, President Joe Biden’s aggressive Build Back Better bill appears dead politically — strangled in the Senate by Republicans hard-set against letting the Democratic president expand the role of government and assisted by two recalcitrant Democrats eager to protect the status quo.
We take no position on the broader omnibus package. But contained within the bill were important provisions that promised to greatly help the industry and consumers underwrite the costly switch to electrified transportation. Regardless of the politics, that work must go on.
It’s now vital that all parts of the auto industry set aside past differences and unite their lobbying efforts behind a standalone bill with new, fairer federal tax credits and federal infrastructure spending to aid the transition to electric propulsion, lest the whole costly effort stall and fail.
The EV subsidy provisions in the Build Back Better package included broadened tax credits that weren’t limited to 200,000 vehicles and that would have helped the entire industry.
But they also included a payoff to the UAW, authored by Michigan’s congressional delegation, that would have given automakers with a unionized work force in the U.S. an unfair competitive advantage of an additional $4,500 tax credit on EV purchases.
Source: https://www.autonews.com/editorial/time-auto-industry-unite-behind-subsidies-evs