Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Rebecca Mansour warned former Vice President Joe Biden’s energy policy proposals, if implemented, would facilitate further offshoring of American auto manufacturing jobs to China.
Mansour joined Friday’s edition of Live with Renk, a radio show based in Battle Creek, Michigan, to explain Biden’s push to replace domestic oil and gas production with renewable energy would push U.S. automotive manufacturing to China, Mansour warned.
Renk praised Mansour’s analysis of what Biden’s energy policy proposals would do to Michigan as “an in-depth piece about the loss of jobs in Michigan” and the impact of such policies on Michigan’s families.
Mansour, born and raised in metro Detroit, highlighted the centrality of natural gas to the Great Lakes State’s economy.
“Michigan is a huge state for the natural gas industry,” Mansour noted. “There’s about a 160,000 jobs that are directly related to the oil and natural gas industry in Michigan and that supply chain for our energy sector runs through all the states, but especially in Michigan, because it’s a manufacturing hub. It also leads the nation in natural gas capacity too.”
Michigan has more natural gas storage capacity than any other state, with more than one-ninth of the nation’s total, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Residents of northern states would be particularly harmed by Biden’s stated intention to drive up the cost of natural gas. Biden has called for ban on fracking and supported imposition of a “carbon tax” on carbon dioxide emissions associated with the fossil fuel consumption.
“Seventy-five percent of Michigan homes are heated with natural gas,” Mansour remarked. “What Joe Biden wants to do is move the whole country towards totally renewable energy sources by 2035.”
Mansour, who now lives in Los Angeles, CA, recently described California’s electricity shortages caused by the Golden State’s renewable energy policies that rely heavily on wind and solar power. She identified California’s rolling blackouts as a harbinger of America’s energy future under a Biden administration:
I experienced this in California — what the implication of [Biden’s] policies are – because California has adopted similar green goals to transition to zero emissions and full renewable energy by 2035, and what we see in our state here is perennial rolling blackouts, because wind and solar are not reliable sources of energy.
Electricity shortages in northern states during winter would have worse consequences than in California, Mansour held.
“Can you imagine that situation in Michigan during a polar vortex?” asked Mansour. “It’s ridiculous. The reason natural gas is great as an energy source is [because of] what they call ‘dispatchability,’ meaning you can store it in the summer months when you don’t need it as much, and then you can ramp it up in the winter months.”
Mansour noted the unreliability of wind and solar energy given weather variables and lack of storability.
Manufacturing industries cannot function without reliable power sources, Mansour stated. “The cornerstone of any good vibrant manufacturing economy is access to affordable and reliable energy, so consider what [Joe Biden’s energy policies] would do to Michigan.”
Mansour continued, “Joe Biden’s energy plan is to move the entire country towards zero emissions by eliminating the internal combustion engine and going completely towards electric vehicles. Now, the auto industry in general is already moving in that direction, and that has more to do with their own bottom line and less to do with the environment, because they have calculated that basically eliminating the internal combustion engine eliminates about 300 parts and components in a car. That makes it cheaper to make the car.”
Consumers will not benefit from less expensive cars if automakers discontinue their use of internal combustion engines in favor of battery electric vehicles, Mansour explained.
She said car manufacturers will not pass the savings of lower production costs to consumers, while thousands of jobs related to the conventional gasoline-powered vehicles will be wiped out.
“The sticker price doesn’t go down [with electric vehicles], so it’s just as expensive or even more expensive to the consumer, but the auto industry makes a lot of bucks,” Mansour stated. “That means that you wipe out lots of jobs, because with all of those components in the car — there are part suppliers that make them, blue collar workers that assemble them and create them, and white collar workers that sell them. That entire supply chain — are wiped out.”
When you take away all these components, what does a car become? It becomes a chassis, four wheels, and a battery pack, essentially, right? Well guess what, the biggest component is that battery pack. The battery pack will be assembled, much like a cellular phone or electronic component. Guess where all that’s made? That’s made in China.
The big fight is right now [is over] who is going to control the future of automation. Is it going to be Michigan or is it going to be Beijing? One of [China’s] goals with their China 2025 economic plan is to dominate the automotive industry and to replace Detroit as the Motor City, and so the big fight is who’s going to be in charge. Where are those jobs are going to be?
And I’ll tell you what, Joe Biden doesn’t see China as a threat.
Biden has repeatedly scoffed at and dismissed characterizations of China as a geopolitical adversary.
Mansour went on, “In a Joe Biden administration, there’s not going to be any protection for American workers. He doesn’t believe in tariffs, so what you’re going to see is one-way trade barriers where China is trying to make it economically beneficial to the auto industry to make their cars in China and then sell them to the United States. That’s what’s going to happen in a Joe body administration. I guarantee it.”
In an article on this topic for Breitbart News, Mansour noted:
A Biden-led administration’s rapid push towards an all-electric future would rob U.S. auto workers of the advantage of experience and U.S. auto plants of the advantage of previously built manufacturing capacity. Biden’s rapid push towards EV would tempt American automakers to train workers in China and invest in new plants there — a temptation that will likely be fostered by almost unlimited state subsidies from the Chinese regime and one-way trade barriers that will make it easier to sell cars in the U.S. and China if they are made in China.
Given time and a Trump administration’s protections of U.S. manufacturing, U.S. automakers could be incentivized to train American workers to build EVs and to invest in U.S. capacity. Rushed and without tariffs, most of this will likely end up in China — just like all the rest of American manufacturing thanks to decades of failed trade policies like Joe Biden’s.
Renk asked about widespread Democrat promises of new jobs in the “green energy field”. Former President Barack Obama regularly predicted that his energy policies would yield boon of employment and prosperity via the “clean energy” industry.
Mansour replied:
You want to now where those jobs are going to go? China, because China is the one that is going to be making those solar panels. China is the one that is going to be making new batteries for your new cars. China is the one that is going to be making a wind turbine. That’s where all goes with Joe. These jobs will disappear.
The 160,000 [job loss] estimate I gave is just natural gas and oil sector jobs in Michigan. That does not account for all of the parts that go in the car that’s going to be disappearing. That doesn’t account for all the automotive jobs.
[…]
The 160,000 figure is just direct jobs [and] people within the energy sector … everybody from petroleum engineers to environmental experts to rig hands to truck drivers, caterers, contractors, everybody within that sector, but there are seven million Americans that are employed in the automotive sector, and Biden’s energy policies will have a dramatic impact on that sector.
Electric vehicles still largely draw power from a power grid primarily built around fossil fuels, Mansour noted.
“We still have a fossil fuel-burning power grid,” Mansour said. “So they’re not really helping the environment. They’re just extending the tailpipe, essentially. It’s all a big con. It’s all just about making somebody else rich, really, and it’s a big cash cow for the auto industry. They don’t care about the environment, and they don’t care about consumers, because consumers don’t want these cars.”
Mansour cautioned:
My closing argument would be this: Taken as a whole, Joe Biden’s energy policies will replace America’s reliable energy infrastructure and then transition up to a totally unreliable renewable energy grid that’s vulnerable to California-style blackouts. I’ve seen it here, and at the same time, his policies would also dramatically increase the drain on our power grid because he wants to have us all driving electric vehicles that we’re going to need to plug into that grid.
“It’s a nightmare scenario,” concluded Mansour. “It’s fantasy-land scenario, and not only that, a total government-sponsored push towards electric vehicles in this manner is just going to end up wiping out lots of jobs — as it already is, because the industry is transitioning to electric vehicles — but Biden’s push for it is going to make sure that those jobs are in China.”
Live with Renk airs on WBCK 95.3 FM Battle Creek and WKMI 1360 AM Kalamazoo weekdays between 9 a.m. to noon Eastern. The show is available nationwide via downloadable apps at wbckfm.com and wkmi.com.
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