Great Lakes Wire

President Joe Biden's administration's talk about good-paying green-economy-generated jobs doesn't square with reality, including the 8,000 jobs being cut by Ford Motor Company to boost electric vehicle production, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board opined this week.

In its op-ed published Monday, July 25, under the headline "The False 'Green Jobs' Promise," the editorial pointed to another news outlet's report about the job cuts and Ford's plans to spend $50 billion to produce 2 million electric vehicles, or "EV" each year. This would be a "steep ramp-up" from the 27,140 electric vehicles the automaker sold last year.

"The problem is that government climate mandates are driving and distorting investment decisions," the op-ed said.

The op-ed also juxtaposed Ford's job cuts with Biden's earlier comment: "Folks, when I think about climate change—and I’ve been saying this for three years—I think jobs” and United Auto Workers' estimates increased electrical vehicle manufacturing could cost 35,000 union jobs because those greener vehicles require fewer parts.

The op-ed also quoted an unnamed Ford Electrical Vehicle executive who was asked about the job cuts saying "to move fast in this space, smaller is better," and that "we need to scale EVs quickly in the US, and that is one of the aspirations in the [Biden] Administration."

Keeping up with the Biden Administration's climate change aspirations also has prompted California to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 and it looks like states may follow suit, the op-ed said.

"The Biden Administration recently finalized new greenhouse-gas emission standards that are a de facto EV mandate," the op-ed said. "Traditional automakers will have no choice but to churn out more EVs or buy credits from EV makers such as Tesla and Rivian."

Observations by Wall Street Journal's editorial board came two days after a Bloomberg news story about Ford's plans to cut up to 8,000 jobs "in the coming weeks" to free up profits for the company's electric-vehicle production. Bloomberg, saying it got information about the job cuts from "people familiar with the plan," also referred to Ford CEO Jim Farley's plan to cut $3 billion in costs by 2026 with an eye toward transforming Ford Blue into "the profit and cash engine for the entire enterprise."

Other news outlets, including Reuters, followed up on the Bloomberg story about Ford's planned layoffs.

All of the reports followed a firestorm of reporting, such as from the Daily Mail in the UK, about comments by Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan that record-high gas prices at the time didn't "matter" to her because she drives an electric vehicle. Stabenow, speaking during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on June 7, also said she was "looking forward to the opportunity for us to move to vehicles that aren't going to be dependent on the whims of the oil companies and the international markets."

The senator's comments last month were not the first time she talked up driving an electric vehicle. In September, Stabenow posted on her Facebook page an image of herself in an electric Ford F-150, which she described as "pretty awesome."

"I'm not surprised so many people want this great Michigan-made truck — that just means more good-paying, union jobs," she said in her Facebook post.