Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance speaks at the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds, during a rally on Sept. 25, 2024. | Alvin (AJ) Jones/WCMU
This coverage is made possible in part through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
During a visit to northern Michigan on Wednesday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance decried plans to grow the manufacturing and use of electric vehicles in the U.S. — focusing on the auto industry as a way to appeal to voters in this critical swing state.
Though he’s campaigned in Michigan before, this was Vance’s first visit to the Traverse City region, where he spoke to a standing-room crowd inside a pavilion at the Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds.
Electric vehicles
Both campaigns have zeroed in on the auto industry.
For Vance and the Trump campaign, that meant pushing back against policies that rapidly promote electric vehicles, which he said would be part of a Harris administration.
Vance told the crowd in Blair Township that such policies would result in higher prices at the gas pump for Americans, and he said Harris’s support for EVs amounts to supporting Chinese manufacturers.
“The most destructive thing that this administration has done — the Kamala Harris administration — is that she wants to force Americans to buy electric vehicles made in China, and she, by the way, wants to subsidize doing it with your money,” he said.
And Vance said his administration would “drill, baby, drill” — that is, tap more sources of domestic oil.
Harris’s campaign has said in the past that she does not support an EV mandate.
A campaign email with background information said the Biden administration allowed the U.S. to surpass China in “private sector investments in electric vehicle and EV battery manufacturing.”
Vance also warned that Harris’s approach to EVs would cost auto worker jobs. But studies and analyses show that EVs could still require as much or more auto work.
An E&E News fact check said the Biden administration’s tariffs on EVs from China have already resulted in a company shifting production to the U.S., and the Inflation Reduction Act’s EV tax breaks have restricted Chinese manufacturing.
Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the prior year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Act committed billions of dollars to encourage more clean energy, including tax credits for EVs.
This year, emissions standards from the Environmental Protection Agency restricted the amount of pollutants and CO2 vehicles can emit. Trump has wrongly claimed this is a mandate.
And over the summer, the Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to help turn manufacturing centers closed or at risk of shutting down into EV facilities, including in Michigan.
The Harris campaign said that during the Trump administration, Michigan lost tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
“While a Trump-Vance administration would sell us and our jobs out to the Chinese Communist Party, Vice President Harris is bringing jobs back to the U.S. and to Michigan, including with almost 1,000 new jobs announced in our state today alone,” said an emailed statement by Shafeeqa Kolia, Michigan Democratic Coordinated Campaign rapid response director.
Auto workers are a significant portion of Michigan’s workforce and are considered an important voting bloc. Transportation is also the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The United Auto Workers, which has said it supports making the industry cleaner and that workers’ rights should be central to the transition to EVs, has endorsed Harris. So has the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, whose local union hall sits just down the road from the fairgrounds. Union members put up Harris/Walz signs for people to see as they drove in to attend the Vance rally.
Meanwhile, other unions, like the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, have declined to support either candidate.
And some researchers say EVs have an economic advantage over gas-powered vehicles.
“There’s tremendous — billions of dollars — of investment, both by the federal government as well as the auto industry in the U.S. to advance EV manufacturing, battery manufacturing,” said Gregory Keoleian, a University of Michigan professor who studies the environmental impacts of products, including cars. “And so it’s leading to new jobs in Michigan.”
Keoleian said stopping investments already made in EVs would “set us back and really hurt the American industry, and also have significant implications in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions and our climate crisis.”
Immigration as a refrain
The Trump/Vance campaign has made immigration a central theme, and in Traverse City on Wednesday night, Vance mentioned it in connection with jobs, education and more.
In response to a reporter’s question on northern Michigan’s housing crunch, he claimed without citing specific evidence that people are being elbowed out of the housing market because of increased demand from immigrants, and called for a mass deportation to ease the housing crisis.
“The first thing that you’ve got to do to make it more affordable to buy a home in this country is to get people who shouldn’t be here out of the country in the first place,” said Vance.
Both Vance and presidential candidate Donald Trump have claimed the housing crisis is caused by immigration.
But experts and research both point to a variety of causes for the housing crisis. In northern Michigan, those causes include a low number of available housing units, soaring prices and rising interest rates, and an influx of short-term rentals that have taken up housing that would otherwise go to year-round occupants.
And some housing experts say limiting immigration would actually negatively affect the construction labor market.
The need to build housing is something both tickets agree on, though they go about it in different ways. Vice President Kamala Harris — and Michigan Democrats — have focused on public investment in housing. Trump has focused on making development cheaper for the private sector to take on.
Vance said the Trump administration would address housing by deregulating many sectors of the economy.
“We’ve got to get back to making it easier for people to build things in this country,” he said. “That will drive down the cost of housing and make American homeownership affordable again for Michigan.”
A moment on Ukraine
In response to another question from a reporter on how his ticket would end the war in Ukraine, Vance said “Donald Trump believes in peace through strength and peace through smart diplomacy, and that’s what he’s going to bring back to the White House.”
He added, “I don’t appreciate Zelenskyy coming to this country and telling the American taxpayers what they ought to do. He ought to say, thank you to the American taxpayers” – this was also popular with the crowd.
(Zelenskyy was in the U.S. this week, urging more support for Ukraine’s war effort and addressing the United Nations General Assembly.)
Among the crowd
The Northwestern Michigan Fairgrounds site where Vance spoke was standing room only. Voters expressed concerns about the economy and immigration, as well as Michigan’s future.
Attendee Leana Krause said she was worried about the future of the American auto industry.
“Even as far north as Traverse City, there are a lot of factories that we have that make parts,” she said. “I want to hear what they’re gonna do as far as energy concerns because we are more rural up here. So, we expect things to cost a little bit more but, the fuel costs contribute to absolutely everything.”
Those concerns about the auto industry were echoed by Mike Ackerman, who said his father “was a Ford Motor guy 35 years.”
“Not only the federal government, but the state government are trying to shove electric vehicles down our throats,” Ackerman said. “We don’t want them, take them back.”
William Renberger said he was worried about the border and “China coming over here and building factories over here and taking jobs away from our people.”
Speaking to increased concerns over Chinese investments in America. JD Vance criticized the proposed Gotion EV battery plant, owned by a Chinese EV firm.
After the speech, Trump supporters felt Vance spoke on issues relevant to them.
Vance “has answers to questions that are going to relate to every single one of us. Whether young, old, in-between working, not working, raising families, going to school, taking care of our homes, filling our refrigerators, our gas tanks,” said Darcie Picken, who described herself as a campaign volunteer “for a long, long time.”
Others, like Rocky and Kimberly Wicker, seemed antsy at the prospect of another close race, and their confidence in Trump’s chances of victory.
“I must say 80 percent confident. That’s about all I can do,” said Rocky Wicker.
“I’m not sure,” Kimberly Wicker said. “I mean, I’m hopeful but you never know.”