Why is Biden Touring General Motors Plant?

President Joe Biden, Wednesday is planning to tour a General Motors plant in Detroit, Wednesday, as he continues to sell the benefits of the recently signed $1 trillion infrastructure law. Biden is expected to highlight $7.5 billion in the new law automobile technology.

Biden on Wednesday will visit a General Motors plant in Detroit where electric vehicles are manufactured. He will use the occasion to announce that the $7.5 billion in the new infrastructure law for electric vehicle chargers will help America get off the sidelines on green energy.

Currently, the US market share of plug-in electric vehicle sales is one-third the size of the Chinese electric vehicle market.

Two top White House advisers, writing in the Detroit Free Press, said the legislation will help America regain its global competitiveness after decades of delay and decay.

Nobody knows this better than Detroit, which has been at the heart of American industrial strategy in the past and now can again and this is why Biden is coming today.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki has stressed that the administration is looking at “every tool in our arsenal” to combat high gasoline prices, saying that Biden and his economic team are “quite focused” on the issue.

Psaki said the administration has asked the Federal Trade Commission “to crack down on illegal pricing” and is engaging with countries and entities abroad like OPEC on increasing supply.

Biden wanted $15 billion to build 500,000 chargers and hasn’t given a number for how many could be constructed for half that amount.

General Motors plant that Biden will visit was slated to be closed in 2018 as the automaker tried to shed excess factory capacity to build sedans as buyers shifted toward SUVs and trucks. But the plant, which built cars with internal combustion engines since it opened in 1985, was rescued a year later and designated Factory Zero to build zero-emissions electric vehicles.

Currently, the 4.1 million-square-foot plant, which straddles the border between Detroit and the enclave of Hamtramck, is making pre-production versions of the electric GMC Hummer pickup truck.

Next year it will start making a Hummer electric SUV. The plant will start cranking out the Origin, an electric vehicle for GM’s Cruise autonomous vehicle subsidiary, in 2023, and an electric Chevrolet Silverado pickup at an unspecified date.

The plant won’t see much direct impact from the infrastructure spending, but it will benefit from $7.5 billion designated to help build an electric vehicle charging network.