The Senate on Wednesday narrowly passed a Republican-led measure aimed at cutting Beijing out of the supply chain for electric vehicle chargers – but which the White House says would do just the opposite.
Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) joined Republicans to pass the Congressional Review Act resolution, S.J. Res. 38 (118), by a vote of 50-48. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted against it.
The White House on Wednesday pledged to veto the resolution, which would overturn a rule temporarily waiving some domestic content requirements for federally funded electric vehicle charging stations.
“If we’re going to spend $5 billion of taxpayer money to build electric vehicle charging stations in the United States, they should be built by Americans, in America, using American products,” the resolution’s sponsor, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said on the Senate floor.
Several Democrats, on the other hand, argued that overturning the rule would mean that EV charger sourcing requirements would revert to a blanket waiver from 1983, which would mean fewer prohibitions on foreign-made products.
“If you repeal this rule, as the Rubio resolution would do, it would remove all Buy America restrictions on EV charger purchases, allowing federal taxpayer dollars to buy chargers from China,” Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said on the floor.
The United Steelworkers and the White House made the same argument against the measure.
“If enacted, S.J. Res. 38 would weaken Buy America requirements by reverting to FHWA’s general waiver for manufactured products, allowing federal dollars-including $7.5 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure bill-to be spent on chargers made in competing nations like the People’s Republic of China,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.
