President Biden last week kicked off the second leg of his “Investing in America” tour to showcase what his administration has created.
Here’s an idea for his challengers: a countrywide tour highlighting the plants, jobs, and investment Mr. Biden’s administration has destroyed. Below is a list of possible stops. [emphasis, links added]
• Lordstown, Ohio. The five-year-old electric-truck startup LordstownMotors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 27. The Trump administration in 2020 brokered a deal for the company to take over a closed General Motors plant.
Even though Lordstown’s prototype truck caught fire during testing early in 2021, the Biden administration’s promise of endless electric vehicle subsidies lured investors to sink hundreds of millions of dollars into the troubled manufacturer.
By late February, it had made only 31 vehicles, most of which had to be recalled owing to defects.
Lordstown is far from the only electric vehicle startup that’s figuratively combusting. Nikola warned earlier this year it was running on fumes. Its founder last autumn was convicted of defrauding investors by overhyping its technology.
Now the electric truck maker is beseeching investors to allow it to issue more shares, which would allow the company to raise more capital.
Rivian, which went public in November 2021 at a more than $100 billion valuation, has recalled about half of the 29,000 electric vehicles it has delivered because of various defects. Its valuation has plunged to $15.7 billion, and the company is laying off workers to conserve cash.
The Biden green subsidy rush encouraged investors to plow money into these startups with little manufacturing experience. Now, investors and workers are getting burned.
• Belvidere, Ill. Citing increased costs of producing electric vehicles, Chrysler’s parent, Stellantis, announced in December it is closing its Jeep Cherokee plant here that had employed some 1,350 workers.
In April Stellantis offered buyouts to 33,500 American workers. “The cost of electrification cannot be passed on to the customer,” its North American chief operating officer said.
Ford last week said it plans to lay off at least 1,000 employees despite receiving a $9.2 billion loan from the Energy Department to build three battery plants.
Major automakers are losing tens of thousands of dollars on each electric vehicle they sell, even though they’re about 25% more expensive on average than gasoline-powered cars. Raising electric vehicle prices even more would make them harder to sell.
The sad irony is that workers will have to pay for the government-mandated electric vehicle transition.
The United Auto Workers studies estimate the shift could cost 35,000 union jobs. More will surely be lost at U.S. plants owned by nonunionized foreign manufacturers.
• Madison, Iowa. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy announced this spring that thanks to Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, it would resume wind production at Iowa and Kansas plants it had shut down last summer. Hold the champagne.
Siemens and its top competitors, Vestas and GE Renewable Energy, are bleeding cash.
Siemens lost nearly $1 billion on wind energy last year, slightly better than Vestas ($1.7 billion) and GE Renewable Energy ($2.2 billion). Wind components are breaking down sooner and more often than expected, requiring expensive repairs.
About 15% to 30% of components in Siemens’ onshore wind fleet could need to be fixed, which could cost up to $1.7 billion.
Blame new wind turbines, whose giant blades are more powerful and more prone to defects. Like electric-vehicle startups, wind manufacturers rushed to capitalize on subsidies and neglected product quality.
• Murdo, S.D. On his first day in office, Mr. Biden revoked a critical cross-border permit for TC Energy’s Keystone XL pipeline, which aimed to deliver 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta through South Dakota and Montana to the Gulf Coast.
The pipeline was already under construction and projected to furnish some 11,000 jobs—no government subsidies required.
It also would have been a boon to small towns like Murdo, where substations had been built to power oil pumps. Thanks to the president, that opportunity, along with TC Energy’s $8 billion planned investment, has gone up in smoke.
• Duluth, Minn. The administration this month revoked a permit for a copper-and-nickel mine in Minnesota’s Iron Range—the latest in a series of critical mineral projects it has either blocked or delayed.
As a result, the minerals needed to power Mr. Biden’s green energy transition will come from overseas, which is also where investment and jobs will go.
Private innovation often eliminates jobs and businesses in the process of generating new and more productive ones. The president’s policies do the opposite.
They destroy businesses that provide good-paying jobs and products consumers want while creating unproductive industries that can’t survive without government welfare.
That’s Bidenomics in a nutshell.
h/t Steve B.
Read more at WSJ
So are the Unions still going to support the Democrats and ignore all those workers? Its happened before the left have always exploited the working-class