Looking for a practical gift for your favorite corporate political reporters? Might I suggest a pair of kid gloves, to replace the well-worn pair they’re sporting covering the Harris/Walz presidential campaign. Amazon has an excellent selection, including four pairs for $16.99.
Unless you live in the Memphis region of western Tennessee, this likely is news to you: Ford has delayed by several years – years! – the grand opening of its ballyhooed “Blue Oval City” massive EV plant that was supposed to build its next generation electric Lightning F-150 pickups and advanced batteries. Ford committed to spending nearly $6 billion to build the facility and promised to create 6,000 jobs.
The plant was scheduled to begin its annual rollout of 500,000 spanking brand-new Lightning pickups beginning next year. Production isn’t expected to begin until the second half of 2027 at the earliest. It’s a major blow to the community and businesses that made major investments based on the plant’s expected 2025 opening.
Here’s the BS statement Ford’s shameless spinsters issued to local Tennessee media.
“Ford is retiming the launch of its groundbreaking electric truck code-named “Project T3” to the second half of 2027. Taking all the learnings from F-150 Lightning customers, the truck will offer features and experiences never seen on any Ford truck, including upgraded bi-directional charging capability and advanced aerodynamics. The truck will be assembled at BlueOval City’s Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center,” Ford said in a news release. “Retiming the launch allows the company to utilize lower-cost battery technology and take advantage of other cost breakthroughs while the market continues to develop.”
Learnings?
At this writing, I can’t find the statement on Ford’s media center site, which perhaps explains why the story hasn’t yet received national attention. That’s telling because Ford was loquacious when it announced its Tennessee venture, along with plans to invest $5 billion to build two battery plants in Kentucky, three years ago.
Look at the breathless headlines Ford wrote crowing about the company’s biggest investments ever.
“This is a transformative moment where Ford will lead America’s transition to electric vehicles and usher in a new era of clean, carbon-neutral manufacturing,” Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford declared in the news release. “With this investment and a spirit of innovation, we can achieve goals once thought mutually exclusive – protect our planet, build great electric vehicles Americans will love and contribute to our nation’s prosperity.”
Ford’s delay is the latest black mark for the Biden/Harris Administration’s signature climate change initiatives, the cornerstone of which were aggressive EV adoption mandates. Ford and GM have received billions in taxpayer monies to finance their once lofty EV ambitions, only to dramatically scale them back. Foreign-owned Toyota continues with its more than $18 billion commitments in the U.S., which possibly now exceed the combined EV investment totals of Ford and GM.
Ford also previously promised to invest $3.5 billion to build an electric battery plant in rural Michigan and create 2,500 jobs, for which Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer awarded the company $1.7 billion in grants and subsidies and covered the costs to tear up fertile farmland and destroy century old trees to build the project. Ford subsequently said it would invest only $2.5 billion and create only 1,700 jobs.
Ford’s delaying of its Tennessee project should outrage U.S. taxpayers and be an issue in the 2024 presidential election. That’s because Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the patron saint of failed Democratic green energy initiatives, a year ago gave Ford a sweetheart $9.2 billion below market interest rate loan to finance Ford’s Tennessee and Kentucky projects. The loan far and away was the single biggest financial commitment the Biden administration has made in its effort to build an electric vehicle manufacturing network in the United States.
What gave the loan a particularly bad odor was that it came from a special fund earmarked to finance innovative green energy projects that couldn’t qualify for traditional financing. Compounding the bad smell was the role that Chris Smith, Ford’s top lobbyist and chief government affairs officer, possibly played in securing the financing. Months before Granholm approved Ford’s loan, she named Smith as an advisor to her Energy Advisory Board, which she said was “an important component of DOE’s strategy to improve its research and development portfolio and program activities.”
I’m not alone in having my olfactory senses overwhelmed by Granholm’s Ford loan. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee, also raised concerns about the seemingly conflict of interest.
“The totality of these circumstances amounts to, at the very least, the appearance of an undue influence by Ford on the Department of Energy,” Barrasso wrote in a letter to Granholm last year. “The Department must be guided by a spirit of impartiality and competition as it allocates hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.”
“It is clear this cannot happen while Ford’s top lobbyist remains on your Advisory Board,” Barrasso added.
Barrasso also called for the Inspector General to investigate Granholm for promoting Ford projects while heading the DOE, owning shares of electric vehicle maker Proterra while President Biden promoted the company, violating the Hatch Act, and failing to disclose her family’s investments, including Ford shares valued at $2,457.89 owned by her husband.
“Secretary Granholm lied to the committee about her family’s stock holdings,” Barrasso said. “This comes after her failure to follow basic ethics and disclosure rules. This is a troubling pattern. It is unacceptable.”
According to Forbes, Granholm held Proterra stock options, which she likely was given for free in exchange for agreeing to serve on the company’s board. Granholm sold her Proterra financial interest for $1.6 million in May 2021, just weeks after President Biden implicitly endorsed the company with an online tour of the its South Carolina manufacturing operations and a month before the company went public merging with a blank check company, allowing it to escape the scrutiny and disclosures companies face when following a traditional public offering.
Proterra filed for bankruptcy protection a year ago last August, two years after the company went public.
A few weeks ago, Granholm showered GM with an addition $500 million to retool a Lansing, MI, plant for electric vehicles at some time in the future. The giveaway was despite GM delaying EV pickup production at the suburban Detroit plant where it previously built its Chevy Bolt vehicles.
GM builds its electric Equinox and Blazer vehicles in Mexico, where it also plans to build its Cadillac Optiq. Ford proudly builds its electric Mustang in Mexico. The EVs Ford and GM build in Mexico are eligible for lucrative tax breaks thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which Vice President Harris has claimed she helped Biden champion.
It’s fortunate for Biden, Harris, Ford, and GM that Donald Trump prefers to hurl insults, rather than focus on substantive issues. While Trump has called the Biden/Harris EV initiatives a failure, he is either unaware or nonplussed by the billions of taxpayer monies that have been squandered. For all Trump’s railings about the Deep State, he seems blissfully unaware of the tributary that extends from the Beltway swamp to Michigan.
The second biggest 2022 campaign contributions of Ford individuals and affiliates were to The Lincoln Project, a controversial organization dedicated to preventing the re-election of Donald Trump. The biggest individual campaign contributions went to former Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment.
Ford’s government affairs are overseen by Steven Croley, Ford’s chief policy officer and general counsel, who served as general counsel for the U.S. Department of Energy. He spent four years in the White House, first as special assistant to President Obama for regulatory policy, then as deputy counsel overseeing legal policy. Chris Smith, Ford’s top lobbyist, also worked for the DOE
Politico reported that GM’s Barra is close with President Biden, having visited the White House at least eight times since he was elected.
As reported by Politico last year, Jeff Ricchetti, whose brother Steve Ricchetti is a counselor to Biden, lobbied for General Motors, and received over half a million dollars since the start of 2021 from the automaker. Steve Ricchetti also lobbied for General Motors between 2001 and 2008, a few years before he became counselor to then-Vice President Biden, and later his chief of staff. Both of them lobbied the Senate for GM while Biden was a senator from Delaware.
Missy Owens, the president’s niece, joined the company in February 2022 and now serves as director of global sustainability policy. David Strickland, GM’s Washington-based vice president for regulatory affairs, is also an Obama administration alum.
Trump advocated imposing 100% tariffs on China-made EVs, a move Biden copied last month despite previously ridiculing Trump’s import restrictions. Trump has yet to say whether he would impose tariffs on the Lincoln Nautilus Ford builds in China or the Buick Envision that GM builds in that country. Trump also has remained mum on whether he’d impose tariffs on the vehicles Ford and GM build in Mexico and sell in the U.S.
As Trump opposes regulation, he understandably has turned a blind eye to Ford and GM selling their problem plagued vehicles to U.S. consumers. Ford is the industry leader for safety recalls three years running; it just recalled 90,736 vehicles because their engine intake valves may break while driving. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court recently ruled that GM must face a class action alleging it violated laws of 26 U.S. states by knowingly selling several hundred thousand cars, trucks and SUVs with faulty transmissions.