Three years ago, I published a critical commentary about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s white male privilege that’s proven quite prescient. Newsom’s affluent background has come into focus in recent days after he falsely claimed his family once “hustled” to pay the bills and stay financially afloat.
Newsom was born with an initials-engraved silver spoon in his mouth. His father, a retired state appellate judge, was a longtime friend of former Governor Jerry Brown and John Burton, the powerful former state senator who once chaired the California Democratic Party. Virtually all of Newsom’s business ventures — which helped him amass an estimated $30 million net worth — were financed by Gordon Getty, the son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, a family friend who reportedly regarded Newsom as a son.
The affluent flock together like birds of a feather: Gavin married rich; his in-laws, Ken and Judy Siebel, sold a painting hanging in their home for $25 million as part of their estate planning.
Despite my low regard for Newsom, I applaud and respect his unsparing attack on General Motors CEO Mary Barra. California is America’s most environmentally conscious state, where one-fourth of new vehicles sold are alternative-fueled — the highest share in the nation. The state boasts dozens of EV-focused companies and an unmatched ecosystem devoted to zero-emission vehicles.
Tesla’s global engineering operations are housed in California, and Rivian’s headquarters are here too. Ford even has an impressive and growing team in Long Beach focused exclusively on EV development.
California’s EV Mandate
California had an aggressive EV mandate calling for a ban on gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Let’s not debate the wisdom or merits of that policy; Californians should have the right to determine their environmental destiny.
President Trump disagrees. He spearheaded congressional legislation to revoke three waivers that the Biden administration granted California, which gave the state authority to clean up its air — the dirtiest in the nation — and reduce greenhouse gases most scientists say are driving climate change. According to Newsom, Barra’s GM was at the forefront of lobbying for legislation denying California its environmental rights.
“GM sold us out. Mary Barra sold us out,” Newsom said. “Eliminating Ronald Reagan’s work, eliminating the progress we’ve made under the California Air Resources Board of 1967 where we began regulating tailpipe emissions. The Republicans rolled that back this year under Donald Trump’s leadership. But the American automobile manufacturers allowed that to happen — GM led that effort.”
All In on EVs
If corporate media is your primary source of information, it’s understandable if you instinctively believe Newsom must be mistaken. President Biden hailed Barra — not Elon Musk — as leading America’s EV transformation, and she declared that she was “all in” on electric vehicles, vowing GM would sell more EVs than Tesla by the end of this year and only battery-powered vehicles by 2035.
The media for years has glorified Barra’s leadership. Fortune editor Alyson Shontell even called her one of America’s best CEOs. How could it possibly be that Barra would undermine California’s efforts to accelerate EV adoption — the very goal she insists is GM’s “North Star”?
As longtime readers of this blog know, Barra isn’t a principled CEO who stays true to her word or vision. She’s a survivor, and quality automotive manufacturing and innovation have never been among her best talents or ambitions. What Barra excels at is blowing with the political winds, slurping from the public trough, and buying off Wall Street with billions in stock buybacks.
Barra reportedly was close to Joe Biden, whose inner circle included Steve Ricchetti — a former GM lobbyist — while Ricchetti’s brother Jeff continued lobbying for GM during Biden’s term. It seems obvious that’s why the Inflation Reduction Act showered GM with generous tax subsidies for EVs built in Mexico. Rest assured, China would never subsidize vehicles sold outside its borders, and I doubt any other country would either.
Just before the presidential election, the Biden administration awarded Barra $500 million to retool a Lansing plant to build electric vehicles — a pre-emptive bribe to stop GM from moving more jobs to Mexico, where it’s already the country’s largest manufacturer. With Trump back in power and his tariffs in place, Barra has opted to manufacture gas engine Cadillacs at the Lansing plant, likely forfeiting Biden’s $500 million handout.
Not surprisingly, the corporate media hasn’t given Trump a shred of credit for saving the Lansing plant without costing U.S. taxpayers a dime.
Fool Me Once…
Barra has double-crossed Californians before. When Trump took office in 2017, Barra supported his efforts to roll back Obama-era rules curbing greenhouse gases and smog-forming emissions from vehicles. When Biden was elected in 2020, GM promptly reversed course.
“Given this shared enthusiasm and the President-elect’s call to bring the country back together, we believe there is now a path to achieve agreement on a national standard and complementary policies to accelerate the electrification of the light-duty transportation sector,” Barra wrote in a letter to major environmental groups.
The woman literally knows no shame.
Riding Roughshod on Regulators
In another instance of Barra flipping California the bird, GM’s driverless Cruise subsidiary rode roughshod over state regulators who were alarmed by the safety of the company’s vehicles. Even San Francisco residents — typically enamored with technological innovation — came to despise Cruise cars, with some taking measures to disable them.
Barra was chair of Cruise’s board, so she was ultimately responsible for the company’s management — the same executives she later blamed for Cruise’s regulatory fiascos. Given that Barra had been crowing to Wall Street that Cruise would generate $50 billion in revenue by 2030, management was under considerable pressure to cut corners to make that happen.
Among the corners cut was providing a false record to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation of a crash involving one of Cruise’s autonomous vehicles.” Biden’s DOJ allowed Cruise to escape criminal prosecution with a measly $500,000 fine.
Toyota Country
GM’s brands aren’t popular in California. Toyota is the market leader, with a 17.4 percent market share — nearly double No. 2 ranked Tesla’s 9.8 percent. That’s understandable given Toyota’s focus on hybrids, which are in short supply at some dealers.
Ford ranks third with a 7.7 percent share, and GM’s Chevrolet brand sits fourth at 6.5 percent. Notably, the Chevy Volt — a pioneering plug-in hybrid introduced in 2011, predating Barra’s ascension to CEO — remains the most popular GM vehicle in my West L.A. neighborhood. Barra killed that environmentally friendly technology six years ago. Volt owners I’ve spoken with unanimously rave about the car’s reliability and practicality for city driving; it can go 40 miles on a single charge.
GM’s stock recently shot up after Mary Barra assured Wall Street that the company will once again focus on selling gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. Regardless of one’s views on EVs, shame on any Californian who buys a GM vehicle given Barra’s open disdain for our state’s clean-air efforts. And double shame on GM’s engineers in Silicon Valley who are lending their talents to help her further pollute it with more gas-guzzling, emissions-belching, shoddily built, pedestrian-menacing trucks and SUVs.
Barra’s FU to Canada, eh?
Canadians have even more reason to protest Barra’s leadership than Californians.
The automaker recently announced plans to end production of its electric BrightDrop delivery vans at a plant in Ingersoll, about 125 miles southwest of Toronto — throwing 1,200 workers to the curb. Canadian and Ontario taxpayers ponied up more than $500 million (Canadian) to help GM retool the plant to build those vehicles.
Adding insult to injury, the Ingersoll plant previously built the Chevy Equinox and GMC Terrain, but Barra in 2017 moved production to Mexico. Barra later closed a major plant in Oshawa, outside Toronto, then reopened it with a smaller, lower-paid workforce — and has since shifted some of that production to the U.S. At its peak, the Oshawa facility employed some 23,000 people and could produce as many as 730,000 cars and trucks a year — roughly 20% of GM’s total North American production.
Notably, the Oshawa plant in 2007 was ranked as the second most efficient in North America. Indications are that Canadian autoworkers are still more productive and more committed to building better vehicles than their UAW counterparts. About 40 miles southwest of Ingersoll, Toyota’s Lexus RX factory in Cambridge is consistently ranked among the best in the world for initial quality.
Shawn Fain’s Union Solidarity?
Canadian autoworkers are rightfully outraged by UAW President Shawn Fain hailing Trump’s tariffs and gloating about the auto jobs his union has “reclaimed,” including Stellantis’s decision to renege on its promise to assemble its Jeep Compass SUV in Brampton, outside Toronto.
“Rank-and-file workers must reject the lie by UAW President Shawn Fain that cutting the jobs of our Canadian brothers and sisters is a win for American workers,” said Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks autoworker and leading member of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. “An attack on workers anywhere is an attack on workers everywhere. We need to back the workers in Brampton and not allow Stellantis and the UAW to divide and conquer us.”
No two people ever deserved each other more than Mary Barra and Shawn Fain, who derided Trump as a “scab” and squandered millions of union dues on Kamala Harris — who almost certainly would have let Barra ship even more jobs to Mexico. Barra and Fain both talk out of both sides of their mouths. When they engage in conversation, it’s a duplicity duet.
Canadian autoworkers might consider sporting t-shirts reading, “Eat Shawn Fain Before He Eats Us.”
Canada Isn’t a Charity Case
GM employs about 25,000 workers in Mexico, who, despite Trump’s tariffs, haven’t faced any layoffs. But the vehicles the automaker sells in that country are mostly imported from China.
By contrast, Canada accounts for about 10 percent of GM’s combined U.S. and Canadian sales. On a percentage basis, GM’s EV sales in Canada are significantly higher — despite three of its most affordable models being built in Mexico.
With the closing of the Ingersoll plant, GM will have reduced its Canadian workforce to about 4,000 employees — down from more than 23,000 when the 1965 Auto Pact was still in effect.
That agreement guaranteed Canada a fair share of North America’s auto manufacturing. It was a simple deal: U.S. automakers could sell their cars tariff-free in Canada only if they built a proportional number of vehicles there. The arrangement made southern Ontario the “Detroit of the North,” stabilizing employment and giving Canada genuine leverage over Detroit’s leading automakers.
The Auto Pact was a victim of globalization’s rule book — something Mark Carney, Canada’s Oxford- and Harvard-educated, Davos-darling technocrat prime minister, likely applauds. In 2001, the World Trade Organization struck it down, claiming it discriminated against Japanese and European automakers who didn’t enjoy the same privileges. NAFTA (1994) had already eroded many of its protections, and when the WTO ruling came, Canada quietly surrendered what was left of its manufacturing safeguard.
Once the Auto Pact died, the floodgates opened. Automakers no longer had to balance what they sold in Canada with what they built there. They could chase cheap labor wherever it was found. Mexico quickly became GM’s promised land.
Playing Pat-a-Cake
Carney is playing pat-a-cake with Trump, naively believing that sucking up to a bully will yield meaningful results. Canadian GM workers looked weak and desperate last week staging protests demanding that the company find an alternative use for the Ingersoll plant within 15 days. I doubt Barra is quaking in her leather jackets — assuming she’s even aware of the protests and deadline.
If Carney really wanted to play hardball, he could eliminate Canada’s tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, giving Canadians access to far superior electric vehicles at a considerably lower cost. Canada is trying to reopen the Chinese market to agricultural products like canola oil, pork, and seafood — goods on which China imposed tariffs in retaliation for Canada’s duties on its electric vehicles.
Canada would be wise to close the spigot on any more taxpayer donations to support GM’s operations, particularly given that the country incurred an $800 million loss on its 2008 contribution to bailing out the company. GM made American taxpayers whole on their rescue funds.
The financial website Simply Wall Street in July noted that GM’s liabilities at the end of the second quarter totaled US$179.3 billion — more than its cash and near-term receivables combined.
“General Motors would likely require a major recapitalization if it had to pay its creditors today,” the website mused.
Such a recapitalization would almost certainly require another taxpayer bailout — or perhaps a leveraged private equity takeover. Barra appears to be hedging her bets: according to one estimate, she recently unloaded about 62 percent of her GM stock holdings, not 40 percent as was widely reported.
Californians and Canadians need to appreciate that Mary Barra is their Public Enemy No. 1 — for the environment and for jobs. Successfully orchestrating her ouster would mark a long-overdue return to the good old days when what was good for GM was good for America — and Canada.