‘With each passing day, it becomes clearer the electric vehicle mandate is unrealistic’

So, what is more important to the Biden White House, campaign politics or meeting its nominal climate goals? The administration’s rhetorical flourishes say one thing, but its policy actions seldom manage to match the narrative.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the Biden administration will delay its onerous new tailpipe emissions standards as an election-year sop to the United Auto Workers and other union special interests.

The Telegraph has the story.

Citing only unnamed sources, the Times said the Biden regime would delay current requirements for automakers to rapidly increase EV sales in just the next few years, pushing the targets back until after 2030.

The sub-head to the article gives away the purely political motivations behind the move, saying, “The change to planned rules was an election-year concession to labor unions and auto executives, according to people familiar with the plan.”

In addition to labor union pressure, this latest move by the administration to adjust its agenda was likely impacted by the letter it received last November from nearly 4,000 US car dealerships urging a slowdown in its EV mandate agenda due to low consumer demand for the cars.

“While the goals of the regulations are admirable, they require consumer acceptance to become a reality,” the signatories wrote. “With each passing day, it becomes more apparent that this attempted electric vehicle mandate is unrealistic based on current and forecasted customer demand.”

It is key to note that the Times story also specifies pressures coming into the White House from auto executives, which should hardly surprise anyone. One can easily envision complaints from executives at Ford, for example, which just reported a whopping $4.7 billion loss for 2023 in its Model e EV division, along with an expectation the division will  lose another $5.5 billion for 2024.

Losses at General Motors’ EV business also ran into the billions for the year. Regardless of the utopian desires of the Biden regulators, investors in these and other US automakers are going to have only so much patience for this sort of financial malpractice before a general rebellion begins.

The truth, of course, is that every element of the Biden energy and climate agenda is motivated almost entirely by partisan politics. If a given policy move is not a response to pressure from the climate alarm lobby that has collectively become one of the Democrat party’s biggest source of campaign funding, it is likely a payoff to labor unions who play a slightly smaller funding role, or to trial lawyer interests who support the administration’s lawfare efforts to put its political opposition – most notably presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump – into prison before this November.

Biden’s move in January to halt permitting processes related to proposed new export facilities for liquefied natural gas is another clear example. The Wall Street Journal reported on February 8 that decision was motivated by pressures from leftwing billionaire interests like the Rockefeller Family Fund and Michael Bloomberg who “have provided millions of dollars in recent years to front-line environmental groups that are campaigning against fossil-fuel projects, including LNG terminals that have been proposed on the Gulf Coast.”

Following an intense multi-year pressure campaign, the WSJ quotes one unnamed White House source as stating, “They got our attention.” Next thing you know, a new executive order disrupting a rapidly expanding global LNG market is drafted and signed for the obvious motivation of keeping all the dark money flowing from the billionaires into Biden campaign-supporting political action committees.

Read the full story here.