Instead of attending the second Republican Party debate, Donald Trump will hold an event with 500 union workers from the United Auto Workers in Detroit. The event will come after Trump attacked the union for the strike. There are 13,000 workers in the UAW "big three." Trump's 500-person rally would be 3.8 percent of the union workers.
The comment comes amid Trump's attacks on the UAW leadership, which he says is leading the union down the wrong path with the strike.
“The auto workers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China. The electric cars, automatically, are going to be made in China,” Trump told Kristen Welker.
Trump's problem is that 97 percent of the UAW workers at the "big three" auto companies voted to authorize the strike.
“They have two very different strategies, and they both really need the autoworkers in these states like Michigan,” Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University told The Washington Post in an interview. “Biden is taking this very unusual position for a president in saying the company has made enough profits and can afford to give the workers more, whereas Trump is attacking the unions and trying to create a specter of fear about the green transition.”
Trump's claims that electric cars are automatically made in China ignore that Joe Biden's infrastructure package and the Inflation Reduction Act required that for the $7,500 tax credit to be applicable the cars must meet requirements for U.S. assembly and materials.
For example: "at least 40 percent of the critical minerals by value – including lithium, nickel, manganese, graphite and cobalt -- in the vehicle's batteries must have been extracted, processed or recycled in the U.S. or in a country with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement," CNBC explained.
Similarly, "at least 50 percent of the value of the components in an EV’s battery must be manufactured or assembled in North America. That percentage will increase to 60 percent in 2024 and 2025, 70 percent in 2026, 80 percent in 2027, and 90 percent in 2028."
It has resulted in an "EV battery factory construction boom" across North America, TechCrunch reported in August.
"In 2019, just two battery factories were operating in the United States with another two under construction. Today there are about 30 battery factories either planned, under construction, or operational in the country," said the report.
China has long controlled the lithium-ion battery market, and did so under Trump's leadership. But after Biden took over, the manufacturing of things like chips, batteries and other items began to grow significantly in the United States.