Biden vetoes Republican measure to block electric vehicle charging stations

President Biden on Wednesday vetoed a Republican-led effort that could have thwarted the administration's plans to invest $7.5 billion in building electric vehicle charging stations across the country.

In issuing the veto, Mr. Biden argued that Congress's resolution would have hurt both domestic manufacturing and the clean energy transition.

“If passed, this resolution would undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars the private sector has already invested in domestic production of EV charging stations and curb further domestic investment in this critical market,” Biden said in a statement.

The move comes amid growing political divisions over electric vehicles. The Biden administration is aggressively promoting them as a key part of the fight to slow global warming. The landmark climate law signed by Mr. Biden in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act, provides incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles and for manufacturers to build them in the United States.

Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, Biden's likely challenger in the 2024 election, have attacked electric vehicles as unreliable and inconvenient, and for ceding U.S. auto production to China, which dominates the electric vehicle supply chain.

Republicans, along with some Democrats, voted to revoke a Biden administration waiver that allows federally funded electric vehicle chargers to be made from imported iron and steel, as long as they are made in the United States are assembled.

The “Buy American” requirement of the Infrastructure Act of 2021 says that iron and steel produced in the United States must be used for projects funded by the Federal Highway Administration Act. The law includes $7.5 billion to build a national electric vehicle charging network.

Installing electric vehicle charging stations is a top government priority as studies show that many motorists interested in purchasing electric vehicles are hesitant to do so due to a lack of convenient charging stations.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, introduced the effort to end the exemption. “It hurts American companies and gives foreign adversaries, like China, the power to control our energy infrastructure,” he said in July. “We should never use US dollars to subsidize products made in China.”

Upon learning of Mr. Biden's veto on Wednesday, Mr. Rubio wrote on the social media platform X: “Why is he sending American taxpayer money to Chinese companies?”

The White House argued that by rescinding the waiver, lawmakers were essentially blocking the “made in America” ​​requirements.

That's because a repeal would have resulted in a return to the 1983 policy that waived domestic requirements for many manufactured products. That would have made it more likely that federal funds “would be spent on chargers made in competing countries such as the People's Republic of China,” Biden said in his veto statement.

The Senate voted 50-48 in November to repeal the waiver, with Democrats Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana joining Republicans in repealing the waiver. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to oppose the measure.

The House of Representatives voted 209-198 in favor of the repeal in January. Two Democrats, Jared Golden of Maine and Donald Davis of North Carolina, voted with Republicans in favor of the measure. Two Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom McClintock of California, opposed it.