By Daniel Greenfield October 04, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog
Biden
spent 12 minutes on the UAW picket line. “You guys, the UAW, you saved
the automobile industry back in 2008 and before,” he told the striking
automotive workers.
“Wall Street didn’t build the country. The middle class built the country.”
And
then he flew off to San Francisco for a fundraiser at Atherton,
California, the most expensive area in the Bay Area, for a fundraiser at
the $33 million home of Mark Heising: a Democrat megadonor who is also
the Chair of the Environmental Defense Fund. Heising’s Medley Partners
manages funds for his father-in-law and Renaissance Technologies founder
Jim Simmons who
has been
described as “the greatest modern day moneymaker on Wall Street.”. So
much for the pretense of choosing the “middle class” over Wall Street.
Biden
may spend 12 minutes and speak for 87 seconds at the UAW picket line,
but he spent hours raising money in the Bay Area which is the force
destroying the automobile industry. In Michigan, Biden pays tribute to
the middle class, but elsewhere, he bows to Wall Street.
The UAW
didn’t save the American automobile industry in 2008, it helped
nationalize it. And the Obama and Biden administrations used that
leverage over the automobile industry to promote the Silicon Valley and
environmentalist agenda of eliminating cars and replacing them with EVs.
Electric
vehicles mark the death knell of the middle class. For Wall Street, EV
companies like Tesla, funded by government fines on ordinary car
manufacturers and buyers, offer the promise of getting in on the ground
floor of a booming stock. Tesla has been followed by a series of other
tech EV firms like Rivian (heavily backed by George Soros) that are not
financially viable. Rivian, at one point, was
spending $220,000 to make cars that it sold for $81,000.
But
environmentalists are in love with EVs because they will end mass
ownership of automobiles. The Biden administration, following the lead
of Democrat states, is moving to end most sales of real cars by the
2030s. By 2032, 67% of cars are meant to be electric. And since
53% of Americans can’t afford EVs, that means most of the country won’t be able to own cars.
That’s bad news for automobile owners, it’s also bad news for automobile workers.
The
UAW strike is a direct response to the growing investments by Ford and
GM in EVs. These investments are deeply misguided and a complete
disaster for shareholders. Ford loses an estimated
$32,000 on every EV it sells and
lost $3 billion in
total on EVs in 2023. But don’t get the idea that Ford is selling many
EVs. It only sold 61,575 EVs in 2022 and yet its projections say that it
will sell 2 million in 2025. This is implausible without a government
car ban.
But if Ford were to sell 2 million EVs, who’s going to cover the $64 billion in losses?
At
the heart of Ford’s strategy are the ‘joint venture’ battery plans that
are also the cause of the EV strike. These include a joint venture with
SK Innovation, a massive South Korean company, and China’s CATL. While
Biden promised that his disastrous ‘Inflation Increase Act’ would lead
to the manufacturing of EV batteries in the United States, it has
actually led to American automakers cashing in on subsidies through
joint ventures with foreign companies. What domestic manufacturing means
is American taxpayers subsidizing Ford’s $3.5 billion plant using
China’s CATL battery technology. It also means the end of American cars.
The
UAW is going on strike to demand that the workers assembling foreign
tech in the foreign ‘joint venture’ plants should be unionized. Its
demands include a
four day work week. All the theatrics won’t change the fact that a full EV transition will eliminate many UAW jobs.
The
American automobile industry will become even more of a government
subsidized scam where a dwindling number of union workers install
foreign tech in cars Americans can’t afford.
The industry is
being squeezed on one side by the Biden administration to convert to EVs
and squeezed on the other side by the UAW to maintain a pre-EV
workforce. The only outcome will be more local, state and federal
subsidies (the joint venture battery plants are already backed by
billions in subsidies at every level) and the complete collapse of the
American car industry.
The Biden administration wants Ford and GM
to make EVs that Americans don’t want and can’t afford. The UAW wants a
four hour work week that car manufacturers can’t afford. With lots of
costs and no viable business model in sight, the subsidies will run out
and the crash will come.
The quasi-nationalization of the
automobile industry made it over on the model of subsidized British car
companies that were unable to pursue their own business models, but had
to shift with erratic government policies until they were hollowed out
by American car companies. Now it’s the turn of government subsidized
American car companies trying to meet the insane demands of Democrat
administrations to be hollowed out by Chinese and Korean companies.
Ford
and GM don’t exist to offer value to their shareholders, but to promote
the political agendas of the Biden administration which simultaneously
orders the automakers to meet the green mandates of San Fran tech elite
class and the four day work week demands of the UAW.The automakers couldn’t even do one of these things, they certainly can’t do both.
The
entire purpose of the EV transition is for automakers to sell fewer
cars for more money, but Ford and GM can’t be Tesla. (Since Tesla is
funded by carbon credit fines leveled on traditional car companies, it’s
not clear that any other company can be Tesla, or that there should
even be a Tesla.) Selling fewer cars means that there will be fewer
automobile manufacturing jobs. And if the goal is to sell fewer cars for
more money, who needs GM and Ford, when Tesla exists?
China’s
lock on rare earths and cheaper manufacturing means that whatever passes
for an affordable EV will come out of the People’s Republic of China.
That is the point of Ford’s joint venture $3.5 billion China plant.
American automakers and auto workers are reduced to fighting over how
much of a piece of the action they’ll take from the Chinese crap they
foist on us.
The right hedge funds will make a good deal of money
from the EV transition even as Americans are left with little choice
except to take out a second mortgage to buy an EV or to try to keep
their old car going. Democrats like Biden will pay tribute to the middle
class on their occasional visits to declining auto plants before they
cash their checks from San Francisco.
America’s automobile
industry, once the envy of the world, will be little more than rusting
factories and brands used by Chinese companies with no connection to
Detroit.
It does not have to be this way.
The only way to
save American car owners, workers and manufacturers is to stop EV
mandates. People who want EVs should be able to buy them, but without
the carbon credit fines imposed on car owners and makers, and without
the bans on the sale of real cars. And automakers should not be forced
to sell out their shareholders and customers to push EVs.
The UAW
is selling its members the lie that they can have a four day work week
and an EV transition. The only thing an EV transition means is the death
of the American autoworker.
Autoworkers should not expect to have jobs when American can no longer buy cars.
Biden
spent 87 seconds talking to UAW members and then hours pandering to the
tech industry elites who are killing their jobs. The UAW shouldn’t be
going on strike against Ford or GM, it should be going on strike against
their car-killing bosses in the Biden administration.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
Before this temporary agreement averted a long strike, Charles Payne warned the administration would be playing what I would call Russian Roulette by allowing this strike to occur and what it would do to the economy.
However, I see this as a much larger issue than a labor dispute! It's a national crisis that is in serious need of proper definition in order to develop proper solutions. It's about unions, it's about power, it's about control, and it isn't just about this union.
First, this fight against automation has been fought in every industry in America over the last 75 years, and automation always wins. Industry cannot abandon it, and it's a loser issue for the unions, but it's bigger than that.
The unions were infiltrated from the beginning by communists, a bit later by organized crime, and it's time America's labor laws were seriously altered. No union should have that kind of control. No union should in effect be a shadow government.
When Mussolini visited Sicily in 1924 the head mobster told Mussolini, in an effort to impress him, he didn't need all that security surrounding him since he was under the mob bosses protection. Mussolini wasn't impressed, he realized this guy represented a pseudo governmental power, and that was unacceptable to Mussolini. So, he eliminated the Mafia in Italy.
Being a dictator he did it was monstrous but trumping up charges against them, finding them guilty, and then executing them. As one mobster who was convicted said he was guilty of a lot of crimes they couldn't prove so the found him guilty of a crime he didn't' commit. Mussolini's view was pretty much fell into the category of, so what, this is for the crimes you committed we didn't know about you should have been executed for.
At any rate, the lesson is clear. If you allow a pseudo government in any form, the nation's government ceases to be in control, and that's what's happening in Mexico, Venezuela, and other leftist swill holes. And we're seeing these thugs coming to America and literally taking over control of whole areas of the nation's cities they're infesting.
That's what this is all about. Surrendering control of the nation to enemies of all that America stands for, not wages, not automation, it's all about power and control of the nation by those who will destroy America. And it isn't just this union.
The teacher's unions, which are notoriously left wing are destroying the nation's future workers, thinkers, and leaders with their actions. Negotiating for insane contracts that promote insane green initiatives, and then claiming black children can't read because conservatives take an ‘oath’ to prevent black children from learning to read.
Well, I'm a conservative, and I never took such an oath, and I know a lot of conservatives, and they never took such an oath either. It appears we all missed the meeting when that oath was taken, in fact, we're totally unaware of anyone who has ever heard of such a meeting. So, when and where did this oath taking meeting take place?
Even if that insane statement were true, why would black teachers allow that, since in these schools it's black teachers who are doing the teaching? Or is this another race mongering hustle to excuse their failure as teachers to teach this poor children to read, write, spell, and do the simple math needed to function as productive members of society?
Public employee unions should such as the not be allowed, and especially the teacher's unions. Biden has created IRS rules that have given the unions even more power. Coercive, corrupt, extortionate destructive power, and it's time all these labor laws were readdressed to limit the power of unions.
That's the choice, and that's the challenge!