Incoming US President Donald Trump’s transition team is proposing sweeping changes to cut support for electric vehicles and charging stations and strengthening measures blocking cars, components and battery materials from China, according to a document seen by Reuters. Is recommending.
The recommendations, which have not been previously reported, come as the U.S. electric-vehicle transition has stalled and China’s heavily subsidized EV industry continues to grow, partly due to its superior battery supply chain. During the campaign, Trump vowed to ease regulations on fossil-fuel cars and roll back President Joe Biden’s EV mandate.
The document shows the transition team also recommends imposing tariffs on all battery materials globally, boosting US production and then negotiating individual rebates with allies.
Overall, the recommendations are a sharp departure from the Biden administration’s policy, which sought to balance encouraging a domestic battery supply chain separate from China with a rapid EV transition. The transition-team plan would redirect the money flowing from building charging stations and making EVs affordable into national-defense priorities, including securing a China-free supply of batteries and the minerals critical to making them.
The proposals came from the Trump transition team charged with formulating a strategy for the rapid implementation of new automotive policies. The team also calls for eliminating the Biden administration’s $7,500 tax credit for consumer EV purchases, a plan that Reuters first reported last month. These policies could deal a blow to US EV sales and production at a time when many legacy automakers, including General Motors and Hyundai, have recently introduced a wide range of electric offerings to the US market.
Jason Miller, Trump’s transition senior adviser, said Tuesday that the recommendations “come from outsiders who have no role in formulating administration policy.”
Cuts in government EV support could also hit sales at major US EV seller Elon Musk’s Tesla. But Musk, who spent more than a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump, has said losing subsidies would hurt rivals more than Tesla.
The transition team calls for withdrawing whatever funds are left from Biden’s $7.5 billion plan to build charging stations and battery-mineral processing and shift funds to “national defense supply chain and critical infrastructure.”
The document says while batteries, minerals and other EV components “are critical to defense production, electric vehicles” and charging stations are not.
In recent years the Defense Department has highlighted US strategic vulnerabilities due to China’s dominance in mining and refining critical minerals, including graphite and lithium needed for batteries and rare-earth metals used in both EV motors and military aircraft .
A 2021 government report said the US military faces “increasing power requirements” for weapons and communications equipment, among other technologies. “Ensuring sources of critical minerals and materials” “are critical to U.S. national security,” the report found.
Trump transition spokeswoman Carolyn Levitt said voters have given Trump a mandate to deliver on campaign promises, including ending government crackdowns on gas-powered cars.
“When he takes office, President Trump will support the auto industry, allowing space for both gas-powered cars and electric vehicles,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Allowing more tailpipe pollution
Automakers globally are turning to electric vehicles to comply with strict government limits on climate-damaging tailpipe pollution.
But the transition team’s recommendations would allow automakers to produce more gas-powered vehicles by rolling back emissions and fuel-economy standards favored by the Biden administration. The transition team proposes to move those rules back to 2019 levels, which would lead to about 25 percent higher emissions per vehicle mile on average and about 15 percent lower average fuel economy than the current 2025 limits.
The proposal also recommends preventing California from setting its own strict vehicle-emissions standards, which more than a dozen other states have adopted. Trump barred California from setting tougher requirements during his first term, a policy Biden reversed.
California has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for another waiver to include a stronger set of requirements starting in 2026, which would eventually require all vehicles to be electric, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen-powered by 2035 . The Biden administration’s EPA has not approved California’s request.
Many of the transition-team proposals appear to be aimed primarily at encouraging domestic battery production for defense-related interests. Others appear to be aimed at protecting automakers, even those producing EVs, in the United States.
Proposals include:
– Establishing tariffs on “EV supply chain” imports, including batteries, critical minerals and charging components. The proposal, seen by Reuters, says the administration should use Section 232 tariffs to limit imports of products that target national security threats.
The Biden administration recently increased tariffs on Chinese imports of several items outlined in the Trump-transition document, including lithium-ion batteries, graphite and “permanent magnets” used in EV motors and military applications. Those tariffs were issued on economic rather than security grounds.
– Waiver of environmental reviews to speed up “federally funded EV infrastructure projects,” including battery recycling and production, charging stations and critical minerals manufacturing.
– Extending export restrictions on EV battery technology to unfavorable countries.
– Providing support for exports of US-made EV batteries through the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
– Using tariffs as a “negotiating tool” to open foreign markets to US auto exports, including EVs.
– Eliminating requirements that federal agencies purchase EVs. The Biden policy requires all federal acquisitions of cars and small trucks to be zero-emission vehicles by the end of 2027.
– Ending DOD programs aimed at purchasing or developing electric military vehicles.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
