EV Charger Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them

Recently, the U.S. Congress passed a wildly misrepresented measure related to making electric vehicle, or EV, chargers in the United States. While the bill’s sponsors and supporters pitched the measure as protecting manufacturing workers in the United States, the effort would have effectively removed requirements that EV chargers purchased with federal dollars be made here.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and the other members of the GOP who backed this effort hoped that misleading rhetoric and outright lies would trick U.S. auto workers and their supporters. But the measure was never about supporting auto workers, it was about jeopardizing and slowing the transition to clean vehicles at their expense. Workers deserve more respect than that.

President Joe Biden cut through this façade and put workers first by quickly vetoing the bill. But this isn’t the first—and won’t be the last—time that the GOP tries to co-opt the fight for workers’ rights to advance its own agenda.

Many of these lies to workers are based on the same premise: Investing in the clean economy somehow means sending all our jobs and money to China—no matter how we do it.

We live in strange times. Politicians gleefully vote against bills that will lift up their communities to satisfy their big money donors, while happily cheering clean economy projects funded by the bills they voted against and bragging about investments in the electric vehicle technologies they have fought tooth and nail to derail. They defend U.S. auto manufacturing workers from one side of their mouth, while fighting against the policies that will keep our auto industry competitive in the global market from the other side.

Across the nation, working people are joining together—supported by allies in the environmental movement—to stand up for a better world for themselves, their communities, and for future generations. During its historic Stand Up Strike, the United Auto Workers (UAW) refused to fall for former President Donald Trump’s insincere attempts to court the union, seeing right through his “rally” at a non-union facility. Meanwhile, the UAW concentrated on getting the best deal for their workers and they were able to do just that—right in the face of Trump’s attempts to distract and divide.

Many of these lies to workers are based on the same premise: Investing in the clean economy somehow means sending all our jobs and money to China—no matter how we do it. We know that the opposite is true. Investing in a clean economy is our only shot at keeping jobs here.

The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have carefully written infrastructure, manufacturing, and clean energy laws that create jobs and investments here in the United States—particularly in low-income and underserved communities. That means these laws will greatly benefit blue AND red states, which is why you see a lot of Republicans running to embrace the very projects they voted against.

Requirements in laws enacted by the Biden administration specifically call for sourcing materials from U.S. manufacturers and building out the U.S. supply chain, which will create good, union jobs across the nation. And yet, the GOP rails against these investment and laws, even voting to repeal them. For example, the Rubio bill mentioned above would have effectively removed requirements to source EV chargers from U.S. manufacturers—though Rubio would have you believe otherwise.

This sort of dishonest rhetoric is only going to ramp up throughout this election year. We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it far into the future, but workers in the United States are sick and tired of this dog and pony show. There are real-world impacts from the damaging policies the Republicans are hawking. Politicians should give workers in the United States the respect they deserve and stop with the lies.