The American automobile industry is at risk thanks to President Donald Trump’s war against green energy.
Business journalist Bill Saporito wrote in The New York Times that most car companies had shifted to prioritizing electric vehicles (E.V.s) before Trump canceled efforts to support the industry. He likened the move to insisting that all music should only be accessible on vinyl rather than streamed digitally.
"Ford Motor has mothballed production of the all-electric version of its flagship F-150 pickup truck, and last month announced a $19.5 billion charge related to restructuring its E.V. business," Saporito wrote. "General Motors, citing the loss of tax incentives for E.V. buyers and laxer pollution regulations, switched production at its Orion, Mich., plant from E.V.s to full-size S.U.V.s and pickups powered by internal combustion engines (ICE, in industry parlance). In doing so, G.M. last week announced that it was taking a $6 billion loss in the fourth quarter — on top of a similar $1.6 billion hit the quarter before."
Ultimately, Trump has cost automakers $25 billion in losses.
The ordeal is a repeat of 2008, when car companies prioritized building giant S.U.V.s and trucks. Oil prices spiked so high that buyers began shifting to lower-fuel vehicles like Toyotas and Volkswagens. Then the housing market collapsed. The federal government swooped in with a $50 billion bailout for G.M. after it was forced into bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, Detroit was too slow to adapt when Tesla began to corner the E.V. market. Carmakers then fast-tracked their E.V. programs and joined the global shift to cleaner vehicles. Then Trump was reelected in 2024 and ushered in hefty tariffs on markets that are still promoting fuel-efficient vehicles and E.V.s.
Trump's "tariffs raised their manufacturing costs and scrambled a trilateral supply chain built on autos, parts and subassemblies flowing freely among the United States, Canada and Mexico," the report explained.
The main reason Trump opposed the fast-growing global push for E.V.s is that President Joe Biden championed it. The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act funded projects to build and repair bridges and roads, but it also expanded the support structure for E.V.s with larger charging networks on major interstates.
"The vindictive, oil-loving Mr. Trump, who equates green with woke and views climate change as heresy, has worked assiduously to undo it, working to cancel consumer tax incentives and billions in funds for E.V. charging and battery manufacturing projects," the report continued.
The costs continue to mount for the business community. To make matters worse, Trump’s promises to increase U.S. manufacturing have fallen flat in his first year back in office. Job growth hit the brakes, with seven straight months of manufacturing job declines, according to recent federal data, as Politico reported last week.
Speaking to CNBC at the end of last year, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett was asked about the seven straight months of manufacturing job decline in the U.S. Hassett acknowledged the slump but promised that in the new year new plants would open and those numbers would turn around.
"Superior technology ultimately wins out. By the time the automobile industry is dominated by E.V.s, G.M. and Ford may have fallen well behind China, thanks to the Trump administration," Saporito wrote at the close of the story.