David Shepardson at Reuters breaks the bad news:
The U.S. Congress declined to extend a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles but will boost funding for aviation safety after two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes.
Reuters
So, if you don’t train pilots on your new plane and kill 300+ people you get extra funding… but if you save people’s lives by reducing air pollution and accidents you get your funding cut and foreign competitors subsidized? Makes sense.
Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who authored a proposal to extend the credit, said Monday the EV proposal faced significant opposition from the White House, according to her office.
Reuters
In other words, Trump specifically wanted the EV tax credit for Tesla and GM dead. Obviously we know how Trump feels about green energy, but also recall when GM shut down a few American plants and moved the production of some vehicles to Mexico. At the time, I recall Trump saying he was going to make sure all their tax breaks ended and specifically mentioned the EV tax credits.
It’s hard to know for sure exactly why the White House was opposed, but they cared enough to single it out of a $1.4 trillion spending package –– even though the cost would be less than $3 billion.
Stabenow proposed in April granting each automaker a $7,000 tax credit for an additional 400,000 vehicles on top of the existing 200,000 vehicles eligible for $7,500 tax credits. A separate bill in the U.S. House proposed a smaller credit for used EVs.
Reuters
Let’s be clear about one thing: the law as it’s currently written makes absolutely no sense. Why on Earth would there be a cap per manufacturer?
Since the American EV manufacturers (GM and Tesla) were the first movers in bringing EVs to market, they are punished by losing a huge $7,500 tax credit first while foreign competiton is subsidized instead.
If you want to buy an EV made in Mexico, Europe, or China you get a $7,500 income tax credit with purchase. If you buy American, nothing. That’s the exact opposite of everything Trump ran on.
Americans shouldn’t be forced to buy a crappy EV because of poorly written laws that favor foriegn manufacturers over domestic automakers. If congress isn’t going to extend the tax credit for American companies, they should cut it all together and leave a level playing field.
The extension of the EV tax credit may not have made it into the spending bill… but I don’t think this is the last time we’ll be talking about this proposal.
Trump killed the possibility of an EV tax credit extension after the White hosue came out strongly opposed to the proposal.
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Read the full story at Reuters
well, something we can agree on. US should not subsidize ANY EV maker from anywhere.
Why single out EV makers? Let’s make that *car* makers. Oh, and also add fossil fuel companies, while at it. Let’s see how they will all do without dozens of billions in direct subsidies (in the US alone) every year… Not to mention hundreds of billions in indirect subsidies.