Why electric vehicles matter in the White House race

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown. Today we’ll get into:

• The politics of electric vehicles

• Biden’s debate prep

• Who voters trust on healthcare

Joe Biden really wants people to buy electric vehicles. But he also wants the votes of blue-collar auto workers who are still making traditional petrol cars.

EVs are smack in the middle of two of Biden’s conflicting priorities: addressing climate change and protecting US jobs. [Free to read]

The president’s got quite the target: he wants half of all new cars sold in the US to be electric by 2030, a critical milestone to keep his broader promise of bringing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions down to about 50 per cent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

Biden’s climate commitments are very important to younger voters, but he’s put forth an industrial policy that threatens the pace of EV uptake in the US, and therefore his environmental goals.

China is the world’s largest EV producer and plays a big role in the raw materials supply chain, which Biden is not thrilled about. So he slapped China with tariffs that hit its carmakers and battery manufacturers to allow the US to get its own supply chains going. 

“That’s just what the Biden administration feels they need to do on the political front because they need to prioritise jobs,” Ilaria Mazzocco, chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, told the FT’s Aime Williams and Claire Bushey.

The greener cars also threaten jobs in the US auto industry, more than half of which are occupied by people making vehicle parts. EVs have fewer components than petrol cars, putting these jobs at greater risk.

And that matters in an election year.

Michigan, a vital swing state in this presidential race, is basically synonymous with the US auto industry. It’s home to a lot of auto workers, whose votes are greatly coveted by both Biden and Donald Trump.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

• A rift has emerged between two of the Supreme Court’s conservative justices that could have implications for Trump’s presidential immunity case. (Politico)

• Campaigning in Wisconsin, Trump oscillated between lowering and raising expectations for his performance against Biden in next week’s presidential debate. (NYT)

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed Biden for withholding a shipment of large bombs from Israel. [Free to read]

• Dive into Marco Rubio’s years-long journey from Trump rival to vice-presidential finalist. (Washington Post)

Behind the scenes

The biggest prize at the end of next week’s presidential debate will be who gets the viral clips.

Biden is heading to Camp David today to hunker down at the secluded presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains to prepare. There’s a lot at stake for him.

His former chief of staff Ron Klain, now at Airbnb, has been drafted to lead the prep and help a president looking to change the race dynamics.

Biden’s primary task on stage will be to bring back the fiery version of himself that delivered the State of the Union in March. The president needs to show “he is still able to command the stage and look fit for the job, and contrast his demeanour with Trump’s,” the FT’s James Politi told me.

A Biden campaign official told James that:

[The president] has gotten increasingly punchier in recent remarks about Trump and plans to carry that theme through to the debate, while still projecting himself as the wise and steady leader in contrast to Trump’s chaos and division.

But Biden will go for more than style, with plans to attack Trump as an extremist on issues that include reproductive rights and political violence, while highlighting his Republican rival’s efforts to undermine democracy and prioritise his megadonors, the official added.

Trump’s debate prep is less conventional. The New York Times has reported that he’s holding policy sessions with lawmakers rather than mock debates.

Datapoint

The FT-Michigan Ross poll in June had a new question this time around, asking voters which candidate they trusted more to lower healthcare costs such as drug prices and insurance premiums. 

The answer: Biden.

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Forty-one per cent of voters said they trusted the president more with this, versus 39 per cent for Trump.

That lead rose to seven points among voters older than 55.

On the campaign trail, Biden likes to cite his administration’s efforts to cap the price of insulin at $35 a month for recipients of Medicare, which provides federal health insurance for those over 65.

Last week, the Biden campaign launched a grassroots effort to reach over-65s across the country, with activities such as bingo night and pickleball tournaments.

First lady Jill Biden appeared at events in the swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada. Her remarks in Wisconsin focused on healthcare, as she told over-65s that Trump would cut Medicare and Social Security in the event of a second term.

Viewpoints

• Edward Luce sets the scene for what will be the mother of all US presidential debates.

• The FT editorial board says that US business leaders’ myopic reversal on Trump ignores big economic risks.

• Getting industrial policy right is a tricky business, writes Martin Wolf, and in an era of suspicion, protectionism and interventionism, the most striking position today is that of Biden.

• In an interview with writer John Ganz, Isaac Chotiner takes us back to the early 1990s — the years that planted the political seeds for Trump as rightwing populists thrived. (The New Yorker)