Don't Give Away EV Battery, Car Production to Other Countries

It wasn’t all that long ago that the U.S. got a lesson in supply chains, courtesy of China and COVID-19, yet it is unclear whether we have learned our lesson. If America doesn’t produce more necessities domestically, we will forever be reliant on unpredictable supply chains with other countries.

We’ve already talked about how China is beating us in the deep-sea mining race, but now it’s time for Congress to put aside the chaos and address the issue of boosting Electric Vehicle (EV) battery production here in the United States.

As reporter Bethany Allen explains in her book “Beijing Rules,” the Chinese government realized early in the COVID “pandemic” that facemasks would be scarce. It had expats all around the world buy up masks and send them back to China.

Since the communist country also hosted almost all of the world’s facemask manufacturing, China ended up cornering the market on masks.

You may recall that when Americans needed masks, they were not available at any price.

Well, that was merely masks, which may or may not have been necessary to deal with COVID.

Now imagine the same thing happening with a much more important item. Imagine China cornering the market on the manufacture of EVs or even just the batteries that power those vehicles. It could be a disaster for American manufacturing and, in the long-term, for the planet’s environment.

China is now dominant in the market for making EV batteries. China refines almost all of the world’s manganese, 70% of cobalt and graphite, 66% of lithium and more than 60% of nickel, according to Cullen Hendrix at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Those are the component parts for lithium-ion batteries that are dominant in the EV market today.

But we are making this economic disaster possible.

To prevent it, the U.S. needs to take action to mine rare earths, to turn those minerals into batteries, and to manufacture the EVs of the future. Beijing is already dominating this growing market.

“Electric car sales are growing fast, but China has been building factories even faster for practically every electric car component,” The New York Times reports. “That has created a glut of capacity that has driven price tags for electric cars below the price of gasoline-powered cars.”

This is great for consumers, but not great for the once mighty American automakers who are the dominant employer in the U.S. manufacturing space.

The U.S. has dominated the making of cars for a century. Automotive companies employ more U.S. workers than any other industry, even after the 2008 pullbacks. Last year, U.S. production capacity showed its strongest growth since 2015.

There is no reason we cannot drive this growth farther and faster. However, the auto jobs of the future depend on making vehicles and their components here.

That includes EVs and batteries.

Henry Ford once led the way in making the automobile an everyday item. Now his company, Ford, is showing a commitment to manufacture high-tech batteries in the U.S. That can create thousands of new jobs, while also slashing prices for American customers.

But we aren’t doing enough.

“As American and European manufacturers struggle to catch up, Chinese automakers lead the world in a critical aspect of the E.V. supply chain: battery technology,” the same Times story continues. “They have pioneered new battery chemistries that allow long-range driving at considerably reduced cost. China also dominates electric motor production, and in designing high-efficiency systems that tie together batteries and motors.”

Batteries are the most expensive and important component of EVs. So it is crucial that we bring battery manufacturing back to the U.S. to shorten our supply chains, create more American jobs, secure energy independence, and improve American competitiveness for years to come.

Moreover, if we increase our domestic manufacturing capabilities now, the U.S. will be in a better position to drive innovations in the future. It was American inventiveness that created the modern automobile industry, from the steel mill to the synthetic rubber plant to the assembly line. We can do the same thing for batteries, by finding new combinations of minerals and chemicals that work better, are easier to assemble, and last longer.

America should not rest and give away EV battery and car manufacturing to other countries, especially to economic adversaries like China. It is time to do what is necessary to build EVs and the technology components domestically to help our economy, give autoworkers higher pay, and secure that no nation can control our supply of these EVs.