Today in FAFO Tour 2025: Towns in states Trump won bracing for lost jobs, opportunity due to his promise to slash funding for EV support . . .
These EV ‘Battery Belt’ Towns Are Betting Trump Won’t Ditch Them
Ford, Hyundai, other carmakers cranking up new EV battery factories while uncertainty looms over Biden-era subsidies for them
By
Christopher Otts and Mike Colias
Updated Jan. 7, 2025 8:39 pm ET
ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky.—Mayor Jeff Gregory stood in the cinder block frame of what is soon to be a new fire station in his 33,000-person town.
Even before the cement dries, this small community in central Kentucky already is planning two more firehouses. A $150 million upgrade of the city’s wastewater treatment plant is also in the works, and dozens of apartment buildings are going up on former farmland.
The town is gearing up for a population boom from a pair of electric-vehicle battery factories rising nearby in rural Glendale, Ky., one of which is scheduled to start production in the coming months. Ford Motor is building both of them. Like many automakers, it is anticipating some aid from the U.S. government as it gets into the battery business.
“We have invested, banking on their success,” Gregory said, referring to the town’s preparations for the new factories.
Now, tens of billions in federal money to support more than a dozen new U.S. battery plants similar to the Elizabethtown project are at risk, as President-elect Donald Trump and some Republicans in the GOP-led Congress threaten to eliminate federal funding for EVs.
The complex Ford is building with Korean battery partner SK On is part of the biggest automotive construction binge in the U.S. in a generation, after carmakers and suppliers spent decades steering more factory work to Mexico and other countries.
A collective investment of around $133 billion is expected to create more than 109,000 American jobs, much of it at battery factories across the South and Midwest, according to data from the Center for Automotive Research. The string of battery sites stretching from Georgia up to Michigan has even earned the moniker “the Battery Belt” from some elected officials.
Helping fund these projects are federal tax credits meant to build an EV battery supply chain in the United States. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s landmark clean-energy law, set aside tens of billions of dollars in tax credits for companies that make EV batteries.
The federal subsidies reduce the cost of making batteries domestically by about $4,000 per electric vehicle, based on the average battery size of EVs available in the U.S., said Sam Adham, head of battery materials research at CRU Group, a consulting firm. The government is expected to pay companies an estimated $78 billion in tax credits through 2028, with additional outlays into early next decade.
Competing with China
Some D.C. watchers and Wall Street analysts say they expect the battery funding to survive because it is nurturing U.S. manufacturing jobs, an objective shared by both parties. While no Republicans voted for the IRA, some GOP lawmakers who represent states with big EV projects have defended aspects of the law.“These are huge investments going into places that have been the backbone of automotive manufacturing for decades,” said Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, which represents Tesla, Rivian and several battery makers.
Trump said on the campaign trail that he wants to scrap the IRA, although that would require congressional action. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, the president-elect’s close adviser, has said he would like to see all federal subsidies for EVs eliminated.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team said the president-elect would support the auto industry, both gas-powered cars and EVs.
Some automakers laid out their plans to get into the battery business before the IRA had been floated, during a burst of consumer and investor enthusiasm early this decade. But EV demand has slowed, and executives say they need the federal subsidies to help erase heavy losses.
General Motors said it received about $800 million from the IRA battery credits in 2024 and expects bigger sums in coming years. The federal subsidies are part of the company’s plan to turn a profit on EVs, said GM Chief Executive Mary Barra in December.
If they are eliminated, “it’ll be just additional work we need to do,” she said during a media event in Detroit in December. GM hasn’t disclosed how much it is losing on EVs. It expects to shrink its losses by $2 billion to $4 billion in 2025.
In Kentucky, the fragility of the EV market is evident at the Ford site, where two plants have been built side-by-side. Ford has put the second plant on indefinite hold, citing weaker-than-anticipated demand for electrics.
BlueOval SK, the Ford-SK partnership, has been on a hiring blitz as it prepares to launch the first plant, which will employ 2,500 in all. Local officials are convinced both plants will eventually come online, providing all 5,000 promised jobs.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Are subsidies for electric vehicles a good use of taxpayer funds? Join the conversation below.“It is full steam ahead,” said Daniel London, head of a local economic-development agency.
Mickey Townsend, 55 years old, recently left her job packing orders at an Amazon warehouse and will soon join the battery plant as a production operator. The $21-per-hour starting pay at BlueOval SK represents a good raise, she said.
Townsend said she doesn’t believe in electric vehicles, but Ford’s multibillion-dollar investment gives her confidence the job will last.
“I just don’t see them putting that kind of money out, and then not being able to keep on going,” she said.
Port strike: How much does the union boss leading the charge make?
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Harold Daggett is leading the dockworkers' strike, demanding fairer compensation and protection from automation
The outspoken union leader behind gridlock at America's East and Gulf Coast ports took home more than $900,000 last year, between a combined $728,000 salary from the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) and another $173,000 from ILA Local 1804-1 in North Bergen, New Jersey, data shows.
ILA President Harold J. Daggett remains at the center of discussion over the port strike that threatens to wound the U.S. economy with shortages and price hikes if not resolved soon.
Gridlocked with the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) after a six-year-long contract expired at midnight Tuesday, the thousands of ILA dockworkers launched the union's first strike in nearly 50 years.
Their terms to reach an agreement are protection from port automation to prevent potential job loss and increased compensation.
Daggett, who was elected president of the ILA in 2011, is now serving his fourth four-year term after working more than 60 years in the industry.
Speaking to FOX Business' Lydia Hu on Tuesday, he doubled down on his demands on behalf of the laborers he represents.
"It's long overdue," he said of the strike.
"Things were rough back then [in 1977]. We went on strike for $0.80. The companies only made like 5 to $10 million, but since COVID and before COVID 'til now, they're making billions and billions of dollars. It's a whole different story, but they don't want to share it. They'd rather see a fully automated terminal right here on the East Coast so they can make more money. They're money-crazy," he added.
He emphasized the union is fighting for jurisdiction, health, wages and more.
Daggett was also named president emeritus of the ILA Local 1804-1, where he served as president for 14 years before stepping down in 2011, and from which he still receives a salary.
Port strike: How much does the union boss leading the charge make?
International Longshoremen's Association International President Harold J. Daggett took in a massive sum of income last year, according to union filings from the Department of Labor.
Personally I hope they automate the whole system and pricks like Daggett get voted out.
Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Jeff Bezos Cartoon Is Killed
- By cigaretteman
- Off Topic
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Listen to this article · 2:18 min Learn more
A draft of the cartoon that Ann Telnaes said had been rejected by The Washington Post.Credit...Ann Telnaes
By Benjamin Mullin
Published Jan. 3, 2025Updated Jan. 4, 2025, 9:38 a.m. ET
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.
In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer" that was “dangerous for a free press.”
“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.”
Ms. Telnaes included a draft of her cartoon in her Substack post. In addition to Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the cartoon depicted Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company.
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David Shipley, The Post’s opinions editor, said in a statement that he respected Ms. Telnaes and all she had given to The Post “but must disagree with her interpretation of events."
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Mr. Shipley said in the statement. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.
Ms. Telnaes did not respond to requests for comment.
Matt Wuerker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for Politico, called the decision to kill Ms. Telnaes’s cartoon “spineless,” adding that the storied Post cartoonist Herbert Block, known as Herblock, and Ben Bradlee, a former editor of The Post, were “spinning, kicking and screaming in their graves.”
A draft of the cartoon that Ann Telnaes said had been rejected by The Washington Post.Credit...Ann Telnaes
By Benjamin Mullin
Published Jan. 3, 2025Updated Jan. 4, 2025, 9:38 a.m. ET
Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for The Washington Post, said on Friday evening that she was resigning after the newspaper’s opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.
In a brief statement posted to Substack, Ms. Telnaes — who has worked at The Post since 2008 — called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer" that was “dangerous for a free press.”
“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.”
Ms. Telnaes included a draft of her cartoon in her Substack post. In addition to Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the cartoon depicted Meta’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times; and Mickey Mouse, the corporate mascot of the Walt Disney Company.
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David Shipley, The Post’s opinions editor, said in a statement that he respected Ms. Telnaes and all she had given to The Post “but must disagree with her interpretation of events."
“Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force,” Mr. Shipley said in the statement. “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column — this one a satire — for publication. The only bias was against repetition.”
Mr. Shipley added that he had spoken with Ms. Telnaes by phone on Friday and had asked her to reconsider resigning. During the call, Mr. Shipley said he wanted to speak with Ms. Telnaes on Monday, after they had taken the weekend to think things over. He later encouraged her to hold off on quitting to see if they could work out the situation in accordance with her principles.
Ms. Telnaes did not respond to requests for comment.
Matt Wuerker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for Politico, called the decision to kill Ms. Telnaes’s cartoon “spineless,” adding that the storied Post cartoonist Herbert Block, known as Herblock, and Ben Bradlee, a former editor of The Post, were “spinning, kicking and screaming in their graves.”
Welker named December Student-Athlete of the Month
- By Todd Conner
- Iowa Wrestling
- 0 Replies
Welker named December Student-Athlete of the Month
Kylie Welker has been named as the December Student-Athlete of the Month. The award was announced by the University of Iowa Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Welker is 15-0 this season with twelve tech falls and three falls and ranked #1 in the country at 180. Welker, a redshirt sophomore...
iowawrestlingblog.com
It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.
Go Hawks!
Minnesota officials warned of criminal, civil consequences of interfering with immigration enforcement
- By Here_4_a_Day
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- 1 Replies
Minnesota officials warned of criminal, civil consequences of interfering with immigration enforcement
Minnesota officials have received letters warning them of the consequences of hindering federal immigration enforcement.
alphanews.org
