The promise to revive the nation’s industrial core is President Joe Biden’s message to America. But the surge in green manufacturing jobs at the center of the Biden policy could be years off. That’s creating a messaging challenge for Biden as he hits swing states and factory towns at the start of 2024, writes Adam Cancryn. Companies rushed to launch projects and capitalize on federal tax incentives after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and its $370 billion in clean-energy spending. But companies pledging multibillion-dollar investments on U.S. plants for batteries, electric cars, solar panels and offshore wind components are just getting started. This leaves a key component of Biden’s promise unfulfilled: jobs. “The messaging is challenging — people actually need to see the results for themselves,” said Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, where recent polls show Biden trailing GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.” And it’s been a bumpy road. Hiring has stalled, with some key manufacturing and swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania losing factory jobs in 2023. Manufacturers added only 12,000 jobs last year, which falls short of Biden’s promises for economic booms. Still, Democrats hope to draw a sharp contrast with Trump’s record on manufacturing. The Biden team plans to highlight a spike in construction employment and the community-wide benefits of manufacturing investments. Charging ahead on EVs
The lag between the Biden economy and American politics is also cropping up in the saga of the electric car and its charging network. Biden has been an unabashed supporter of putting the car industry on a new path in the push to achieve his climate goals. Well over a million electric vehicles were sold in the United States in 2023, bumping EVs up to over 8 percent of new car sales in the year. Still, Republicans and some Americans car buyers are not sold. One big hold-up is the quantity and quality of chargers. Under the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021, billions of dollars were made available to meet a goal of building 500,000 chargers by 2030. However, that goal has been slow-moving. The first EV charging station funded through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program opened in December. On Thursday, the administration announced $149 million to help repair charging stations, writes David Ferris. As of last week, 4,591 chargers were listed as at least temporarily offline on a federal EV charging station database. A wave of extreme cold weather also pushed several Tesla chargers offline in Chicago this week. The charging business has struggled to remain stable as EVs get off the ground. The funding aims to address a persistent lack of maintenance, blamed at least in part on some charger operators going out of business. Many states and localities also didn’t account for long-term charger quality when designing installation programs years ago. The move to address charger repairs follows a wave of additional funding for EV charging and battery research and projects. That includes last week’s $623 million boost from the administration to help in gaps in the nation’s charging network.
| 
