Tag: united auto workers
When Biden's Partisan Objectives Clash With His Urgent Climate Goals

When Biden's Partisan Objectives Clash With His Urgent Climate Goals

The Biden administration, to its credit, never misses a chance to emphasize the importance of dealing with climate change. President Joe Biden calls it an "existential" threat to humanity. John Kerry, his special envoy on the issue, said in April: "That means life and death. And the question is, are we behaving as if it is? And the answer is no."

That was certainly true under former President Donald Trump, who championed coal, abandoned the 2015 Paris agreement on climate, and dismissed global warming as a hoax. Biden has brought a badly needed shift on policy. But his policies sometimes are at war with his rhetoric.

One crucial part of his agenda is speeding the transition from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric ones. Cars and light trucks account for 16 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and Biden wants half of all autos sold in this country to be electric or plug-in hybrids by 2030. That transition would significantly reduce carbon output.

But let's not get the idea that the administration is laser-focused on whatever it takes to curb climate change. Its enthusiasm for electric vehicles, it turns out, is not unlimited. In Biden's eyes, some electric vehicles are good and some are bad, and the difference has nothing to do with greenhouse gases.

The social spending and climate package recently approved by the House of Representatives would encourage Americans to buy electric vehicles by providing a tax credit of as much as $12,500 for each purchase, an increase over the existing $7,500 credit. That indirect subsidy is needed because these cars generally cost more to purchase than comparable conventional cars.

But Biden and his congressional allies are not enamored of all electric vehicles. They want to restrict the full tax break to those cars that are built by union workers in the United States and have batteries built by union workers in the United States. Buyers of other vehicles would get only a $7,500 credit — a $5,000 penalty.

That penalty would apply to almost all of the 50 electric vehicles currently sold here, including every model made by Tesla, the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Nissan Leaf, the Rivian pickup, the Hyundai Ioniq, and more. The only exceptions are two Chevy Bolt models. It would also harm workers in U.S. plants operated by foreign automakers, which are nonunion and produce nearly half of all the vehicles sold here.

The discrimination is a giant favor to the United Auto Workers, a stalwart of the Democratic Party that has been weathering a major corruption scandal. "The union has stressed to the Biden administration that the country shouldn't sacrifice union jobs to meet its climate goals," reported The Wall Street Journal. A White House spokesman insisted that "jobs taking on the climate crisis must also be jobs that build the middle class."

There are some obvious flaws in the administration's logic. One is that given the monumental size of the battle against climate change, it is imperative to enlist every automaker, including nonunion ones.

To exclude nearly all electric cars from the full tax credit will make the national transition away from gas-powered vehicles — a hugely formidable undertaking under the best of circumstances — slower and more expensive. It's exactly the wrong strategy if you place a supreme priority on saving the planet from excessively high temperatures.

The UAW has repeatedly lost elections allowing workers at foreign-owned plants to decide whether to sign up with the union. Limiting the tax credit will hurt those workers. It will also encourage automakers to build electric cars abroad, where they can achieve lower labor costs — enough, perhaps, to overcome the tax disadvantage.

It will also be a boon to the internal combustion engine. As Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told me, "If you raise the cost of electric vehicles too much, people will buy gas-powered cars."

The Trump administration refused to require any sacrifice from fossil fuel companies and their employees merely to avert the worst-case climate scenario. The Biden administration is willing to act against climate change, but it too insists on protecting certain groups at the expense of the broad American public — and all humanity.

Denying the full tax credit to the vast majority of electric vehicles will mean more carbon emissions and warming of the planet. But hey — it's not like this is a matter of life and death, right?

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

When Socialism Saves Capitalism

WASHINGTON — Have you noticed that one of the Obama administration’s most successful programs is also its most “socialist” initiative?

OK, the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler was not socialist in the classic sense: the government was not looking to hold onto the companies over the long run. Their turnaround was accomplished in significant part by tough, capitalist management steps.

But, yes, this was socialism — or, perhaps, “state capitalism” — because the government temporarily took substantial ownership in the companies when no one in the private sector was willing to put up enough capital to prevent them from going under. Today, the companies are thriving.

More than that: the auto industry exemplifies how unions can do their best to protect the interests of their members while also ensuring the prosperity of the companies that employ them.

This month, the United Auto Workers and GM reached a tentative four-year contract that will add or save some 6,500 jobs, provide workers with a $5,000 signing bonus and enhance a profit-sharing agreement.

Note that increase in profit-sharing. The union and the company are seeking to align the interests of workers and shareholders. The idea should be as American as a Chevy or a Ford: When a company does well, its employees should do well, too.

The UAW’s bargaining approach belies the notion that unions don’t care about the well-being of the companies whose workers they represent. On the contrary, the UAW made extraordinary concessions to keep the Detroit-based auto industry alive. Now, its members can fairly claim a right to some of the benefits.

“When GM was struggling, our members shared in the sacrifice,” said Bob King, the UAW president. “Now that the company is posting profits again, our members want to share in the success.”

Anybody have a problem with that?

And the bailed-out companies have come back, as Dick Cheney might say, big time. In August, GM announced that its second-quarter profits had nearly doubled, to $2.5 billion. To put that in context, in April 2010, GM reported losses of $4.3 billion. Revenue at GM rose 19 percent, to $39.4 billion.

In a sluggish economy, the auto industry is providing us with good news. And this good news was brought to you in part by the government of the United States of America, paid for by taxpayers just like you and me.

We taxpayers will reap rewards, too. A lot of money put into the companies will be earned back by the government, but there’s more: Employed workers will pay taxes (and not need unemployment compensation). The auto industry’s large network of suppliers will stay in business. Everybody involved will be able to buy goods and services that will put other people to work.

The larger lesson is that there are two ways to approach the problems capitalism inevitably runs into. One is to pretend that there are iron rules prohibiting us from doing anything at all. We are supposed to have faith that an invisible hand will eventually put matters right; in the meantime, we must accept any slap in the face the invisible hand might deliver.

Franklin Roosevelt described the other way in 1932: “Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws — sacred, inviolable, unchangeable — cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.”

Once human beings throw off the chains imposed by the idea that all economic laws are “natural,” they discover the capacity to change things and can use the tools of democratic government to do so when all else fails.

We did not have to accept the collapse of our domestic auto companies, and we do not have to accept that the Federal Reserve is powerless to give the economy the boost it needs. There is no reason to believe that the federal government is incapable of investing more in schools, roads and other public goods to build for the future and get more money into the hands of consumers now. We do not have to rely on giving rich people tax cuts and then confine ourselves to offering fervent prayers that they might invest some of the money in creating jobs.

We can seek to control our fate, or we can turn the Invisible Hand into a God who commands us to be helpless.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.

(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group