It is planned that 11 factories in eight states will receive $1.7 billion in grants from the Biden administration to help them turn closed or at-risk auto plants into ones that make electric vehicles or parts for them.
The grants come from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. They will give $500 million to a General Motors (GM) plant in Michigan, $89 million to a Harley-Davidson (HOG) factory in Pennsylvania, $78 million to a Blue Bird (BLBD) school bus factory in Georgia, and $208 million to Volvo (VOLV.A) truck factories in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
One of the seven states that could decide who wins the White House in 2024 is Michigan. The other three are Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Facilities in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio will also get grant money. Companies like Cummins CMI, +2.01% and Chrysler parent Stellantis STLA, +3.34% will benefit. In a statement, the Biden White House said that all of the new grants are up for discussion and that the Department of Energy could take back the grants.
“This announcement is a hallmark of the Biden administration’s industrial strategy,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters as she and other administration officials made the grants public. “This strategy is a strategy to bring manufacturing jobs back to America after years of offshoring.” She thought that about 15,000 jobs would be kept and about 3,000 new ones would be made.
Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, and other Republicans have said bad things about President Joe Biden’s support for electric vehicles. In a party platform released this week before their convention next week in Milwaukee, Republicans promised to get rid of the EV policies that the Democratic incumbent had in place.
