When a story hits the news, I am not one to write about it immediately. In fact, I generally wait for weeks, and even months, before commenting. The reason for that is quite simple: I think most things that are said on-air need to be unpacked, digested, analyzed, and then critiqued as they develop in the weeks and months after they’re said.
Donald Trump‘s statements about the auto industry while he was in Michigan last week, however, need a more immediate response.
I do not pretend to be an expert on the evolving automobile industry in the United States, or the world. However, over the last five years, I’ve taken a keen interest in the modernization of automobiles through the use of different fuels and increased technology.
In fact, I have looked at over 50 different vehicles and concept vehicles using both electricity and hydrogen, and came to my own conclusions, which, unfortunately, are different from the ones that the auto industry as a whole seem to have adopted.
Indeed, I have been a huge proponent of hydrogen-based fuels for helping reduce carbon emissions and to ween the US transportation industry from fossil fuels. This does not appear to be the way the auto industry is going. Rather, the auto industry appears headed towards full electrification. This is not a bad thing, and the numbers are beginning to speak for themselves.
Like most Americans, I was petrified of vehicle range issues. However, the facts tell a different story, and it does appear that battery-powered vehicles will suffice, even if it does take some getting used to. The vast majority of Americans on a daily basis travel at distances that are well below the maximum ranges of all electrical vehicles. Electrical vehicles will cut down on the pollution created from the internal combustion engine, which is one of the largest sources of pollutants in our metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).
And while the red Republican party and its leader, Donald Trump, tell us that real America is in the rural areas, that is simply not true. The numbers all have pointed for decades towards MSA growth. Even the slight deviation from this trend recently because of Covid will not change the overall relocation of people over the past 50 years.
Electrical motor vehicles appear to have won the war for change over hydrogen and away from the internal combustion engine. A great deal of credit must go to Tesla and to Elon Musk’s marketing of affordable and innovative EVs.
Tesla, however, is not the norm of the industry. It is incredibly evident when one drives any of the other electrical vehicles currently on the market: BMW, Hyundai , Cadillac, Kia or Mercedes, that automobile manufacturers know what the public wants. The public wants an electric vehicle that drives like a gas combustion engine vehicle. These are not Teslas.
This means that the retooling in the automobile industry is geared towards creating cars that the American consumer wants. That is one of the reasons that range has become the overriding factor in their development. The auto industry knows exactly what it is doing. Inevitably, this will cause a change in the industry, as does any innovation of technology. Much like the horseless carriage led to a decline in farriers and saddle-makers, the retooled plants in many cases are going to use less workers.
This is not a new trend, however. It is a trend that has continued since the 1980s. This is a tale as old as time in the post-World War II economic development of the rest of the world, just not the United States until the 1980s. Automobile manufacturing automation and robotics are key parts of heavy manufacturing in every industry.
Donald Trump and his minions and Luddite companions speak to a world that doesn’t exist except in their own imagination of the past. Isolationist and nationalistic economic policies are a clarion call for going back to a time that will never exist again in America.
And while nostalgia tugs at people’s heartstrings, it does nothing for their quality of life or for their purse strings. The new workers at the automobile factories understand this. The workers in the steel industry understand this. The workers in all heavy manufacturing industries understand this. In fact, even his supporters understand this economically, yet simply don’t like it.
And yet here’s Donald Trump telling the world that President Biden is going to run the automobile industry out of Michigan. That journey began long ago, and doesn’t have to continue if the UAW and the automakers come to a fair resolution, which is what President Biden seeks to achieve. EVs are not the problem: An unfair labor market and the disparity between corporate executives, institutional investors and their quest for larger profits are the problem. But that doesn’t placate Trump’s red base.
The reality is that President Biden and his infrastructure projects are the engines that are driving the American economic train through this decade and into the next. Donald Trump never had an infrastructure week. He never did anything to bolster US production. He talked a lot. He said a lot of bombastic things about China. Yet, he never translated any of that into real jobs and real economic growth. He didn’t have an economic policy that would help workers in manufacturing in the United States.
He’s great at setting up the circus and showing many tricks to many people, but the proof was in the economic pudding, and he failed miserably. What he’s saying now is simply another marketing gimmick and marketing slogan, which in actuality means nothing. He doesn’t understand the automobile industry. He doesn’t understand the manufacturing industry. He doesn’t understand how and where jobs are created. He’s just a really loud talker. And, unfortunately, too many people listen to him. And he’s wrong, yet again.
dum spiro, spero 