Republicans Want The EV Tax Credit Dead

Good morning! It’s Friday, May 9, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning’s edition, we’re looking at the House of Representatives’ idea to kill off the $7,500 EV tax credit, as well as the fallout from the Trump administration’s new UK trade deal — both good and bad. We’ll also look at Audi, and how it expects to move past tariffs sooner rather than later.

Buyers interested in EVs have long had a little bonus in their pocket: A $7,500 tax credit that helps bring price parity between ICE cars and (some) EVs. According to the House of Representatives, though, that tax credit may not last long. From Bloomberg:

Republicans in the US House are more likely than not to kill a consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, according to Speaker Mike Johnson.

“I think there is a better chance we kill it than save it,” Johnson said in a Tuesday interview. “But we’ll see how it comes out.”

Eliminating the popular tax credit of as much as $7,500 for consumers who purchase an EV has been a prime target for Republicans looking for ways to help pay for President Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut package.

It feels like, nearly every day, I write about how opposition to EVs is shorthand for opposition to the continuance of life on Earth. Are EVs going to save us? No. Will they postpone things long enough for us to maybe make some sort of dent in the climate catastrophes we have coming? Perhaps, but the government of the United States of America apparently has no interest in doing so. It’s really, really weird to wake up at 8 in the morning every day and immediately write about how the most powerful people in the world want you to die in a hurricane. 

The Trump administration is big on deals, and the latest one the White House has made concerns its tariffs — specifically, lowering them for British cars. The British auto industry, as you might imagine, is a big fan of that deal. From Automotive News:

A trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. that considerably lowers tariffs on British auto exports to the U.S. was hailed as saving jobs at Jaguar Land Rover.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the deal to ease the tariff burden at JLR’s plant in Solihull, central England, on May 8. “To get that decrease was hugely important to me,” Starmer said in front of a crowd of JLR factory workers.

Britain’s ambassador to the U.S,. Peter Mandelson said the deal will prevent layoffs that were planned at a JLR facility in England. “This deal has saved those jobs,” Mandelson said in an interview on CNN.

Lowering tariffs for automaking countries that play ball seems to run counter to the administration’s stated protectionist angle, its goal of locking out other automakers to give Detroit room to prosper, but maybe Detroit is okay with Britain. It’s a more niche carmaking nation, after all. 

Or not! In fact, Detroit is pretty unhappy about the whole thing. As it turns out, the new deal may well make British cars cheaper than American models — even American cars built right here in the States. From Reuters:

A group representing General Motors, Ford  and Stellantis blasted President Donald Trump’s trade deal announced with the United Kingdom, saying it would harm the U.S. auto sector.

British carmakers will be given a quota of 100,000 cars a year that can be sent to the United States at a 10% tariff rate, almost the total Britain exported last year, compared to 25% for Mexico and Canada and nearly all other countries.

“Under this deal, it will now be cheaper to import a UK vehicle with very little U.S. content than a USMCA compliant vehicle from Mexico or Canada that is half American parts,” said the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents the Detroit Three automakers. “This hurts American automakers, suppliers, and auto workers.”

Will Mexico and Canada get their own auto-parts trade deals with the White House, or will Trump’s longstanding antipathy toward Mexico and desire for Canada’s territory take such options off the table? Who’s to say! You can probably bet on it on one of those sketchy wager sites, though. Like betting on the Pope. 

Detroit’s going to have a lot more to be annoyed about, though, if other European automakers that sell in higher volumes start getting reduced-tariff access to the States. Like Audi, which is hoping to have a deal signed in short order to reduce its tax burden. From Reuters:

Volkswagen’s premium brand Audi, which has no production in the United States, expects current trade talks between Brussels and Washington to provide some level of clarity over car import tariffs soon, its CEO Gernot Doellner said.

European automakers are currently facing a 25% import tariff in the United States, the world’s second-largest car market, causing many of them to pull their outlooks for 2025 and look to Brussels to hammer out a bilateral deal.

“We expect to have clarity on this in the coming months and also regulations that will make what is currently on the horizon more bearable or manageable,” Doellner said at an industry event on Friday, without elaborating.

Well, the deals start coming and they don’t stop coming. Is this all a mess right now? Most definitely! Will it ever not be a mess? There is genuinely no way to predict this. 

Given the pro-natalist leanings of the current folks in charge, as well as the Secretary of Health and Human Services’ general distrust of seemingly any medicine, here’s hoping the pill sticks around. 

FIDLAR’s first album is over a decade old at this point, and it’s still the point in their discography I come back to more than anything else.