DETROIT (WXYZ) — On Monday during Vice President Kamala Harris' Economic Opportunity for All Tour stop in Detroit, she announced that the Biden administration is giving $100 million to small- and medium-sized auto manufacturers.
The funding is in efforts to convert to electric vehicles.
During her stop, the vice president said, "These grants will allow them to update production and production lines for electric vehicles."
United States Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was at the tour stop to support the announcement as well.
The secretary told us the funding, "Will be a competitive process."
Fifty million dollars is going to the Energy Department's Automotive Conversion Grant program to convert manufacturing parts for internal combustion engine vehicles to parts for electric vehicles.
The other $50 million will go to the Industrial Assessments Center Implementation Grants program.
All of this comes as top automakers like Ford are attributing massive profit losses to the pressure of moving to EVs too quickly.
Republicans like Congressman John James are already reacting to the $100 million.
He issued a statement saying:
Last June, Stellantis and General Motors were forced to pay $363 million in fines (that came out of UAW profit sharing, by the way) for failing to meet unrealistic NHTSA CAFE requirements.
Joe Biden helped create this problem and now he wants credit for spending $100 million of your tax dollars to make you forget it… but the North remembers.
You know what’s better than throwing money at a problem? Repealing policies that created the problem in the first place!
That’s why I am pushing back on harmful regulations that threaten the automotive industry with tens of billions of dollars more in fines, increase the price of your new vehicle by thousands of dollars and send more of our auto jobs to Mexico and China.
Michigan will be the center of the universe in this upcoming election and this administration knows it. They care more about activists than auto workers and they prove it every day.
I’m giving President Biden the opportunity to prove that he cares as much about protecting your job as he cares about protecting his. I’m calling on the President to end the campaign gimmicks and support my bipartisan and bicameral efforts to give American car companies more time and American customers more choice.
