Q1 GDP 2024 Revised Down

This is why I’m not blanket against tariffs regardless of who does them.

For the record my issue is with people who have screamed about them for 6 years yet didn’t say a peep when Biden let Trump’s tariffs stand and now is doubling down. Interesting how Biden mentions the China EV issue hurting our auto industry. Isn’t something that Trump said months ago and got ripped for?

 

The difference between Trump's statements and Biden's policies is that Biden imposed the tariffs and there are economists as well as environmentalists who have argued that the tariff's on Chinese EVs are not good policy is that Biden imposed them to protect and encourage the domestic production of EVs, Trump's statement was another reason for his opposition to EVs in general. While opposing the importation of Chinese EVs, Trump also opposed to any policies intended to encourage the domestic production of electric vehicles.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tr...cles-meeting-with-oil-ceos-report-2024-05-09/
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Here’s how Trump could do that:

• Slash emissions regulations for cars. Trump can't fully eliminate vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards because of the Clean Air Act. But, he can make them less and less effective, making them effectively meaningless. There’s a precedent here: in his first term, Trump reduced emission standards to a mere 1.5% annual increase in fuel economy, compared to 5% previously. This low rate matched what the private sector was already on track to achieve, rendering the regulation, which is intended to incentivize greater emissions reductions from the private sector, pointless. Trump also used the Department of Justice to make certain states couldn’t set their own, more ambitious emissions standards.
• Freeze funding for electric vehicle projects. Under Trump, Department of Transportation officials delayed federal grants for transportation modes they didn’t like while prioritizing funding for their own states. The Department of Energy simply did not award any Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loans at any point during the four years Trump was in office. We can expect similarly capricious and retaliatory decisions about important federal funds in a second Trump administration. At a time when the federal government is overseeing billions of dollars in EV and other clean energy investments, it’s more important than ever that agencies move quickly and deliberately to get money out the door. Given Trump’s antipathy for EVs, officials during his second term would likely delay or fail to administer grants for EV infrastructure, automaker assistance, and critical mineral processing and battery production loans.
• More stringent EV battery sourcing requirements for IRA tax credits. The IRA updated the EV tax credit to require increasing percentages of an EV’s battery components to be sourced domestically or from our allies. The Biden Administration aims to balance accelerating the EV transition with fostering domestic industries and preventing adversaries like China from further outpacing us. The Trump Administration could flip this careful balance on its head, rewriting the rules to make it almost impossible for any EV to qualify for critical tax credits. This would not only stall our transition to EVs but also erase a crucial incentive driving automakers and suppliers to expand US manufacturing.
• Slow the buildout of EV chargers in rural and low-income areas. 30C, the IRA’s tax credit for EV chargers, prioritizes low-income and non-urban communities. IRS guidance uses a broad definition of “low-income” or “non-urban” to ensure access for nearly two-thirds of Americans. That could change under a second Trump Administration, which could issue new guidance to shrink the number of communities eligible for the credit and, in so doing, block support for charging stations in many less affluent or urban parts of the country.

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