In the long annals of legislative resentment and bullshit, this story is a doozy:
Sen. Joe Manchin has been at war with the administration for months over its implementation of last year’s landmark climate law. He is even accusing President Joe Biden of breaking a promise to him. “They’re going to try to screw me,” the West Virginia Democrat said earlier this year of White House officials.
Technically, Manchin is mad at the Treasury Department, which is responsible for implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that was practically handwritten in person by Manchin last year. So what's the beef?
Among other things, the IRA includes subsidies for electric cars. Manchin was never thrilled by this, but he signed off on it anyway under one condition: the cars had to be made in America so the subsidies didn't end up benefiting China. But if you scroll down about a million words into the story you get this:
In the latter stages of negotiations, Manchin signed off on a title dubbed “clean vehicle credits,” laying out new, strict critical mineral sourcing requirements for EV batteries....But Treasury has gone ahead and proposed guidance that would allow more EVs to receive the credit than Manchin had originally envisioned, including by introducing a metric to determine whether a critical mineral in an EV battery can count toward meeting eligibility requirements.
Officials have also pulled a term from 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure law — “constituent material” — to allow metal powders used in EV battery electrodes to count as critical mineral processing, a move that Manchin argues will weaken the IRA’s domestic sourcing requirements.
So the fuss is all about how (a) "critical minerals" are approved for use in EV batteries and (b) whether "metal powders" on the battery electrodes are just a gigantic loophole for China to slither through. As to the former, the law says minerals can be sourced from North America or our free trade partners. "Free trade" is undefined, but at minimum includes:
Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Jordan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Panama, Peru and Singapore.
In addition, the EU, which thinks the EV subsidies violate trade agreements in the first place, is in rapid negotiations to get itself approved as a free trade partner for graphite, lithium, manganese, cobalt, and nickel. All of America's allies are similarly rushing to get themselves approved as suppliers, and Treasury's guidelines say that "supplier" can mean you either mined the stuff yourself in an approved country or merely imported it and then processed it an approved country. Manchin says that's too much and Treasury needs to rein things in.
Beyond all this, Manchin has a beef with Treasury defining leased vehicles as "commercial" for purposes of getting the subsidy. On this, though, he appears to be just plain wrong and Treasury is right.
So there you have it. Manchin is dead set on limiting EV subsidies because . . . I don't know why, really. He wants to protect the conventional auto market for some reason. But all this becomes moot before long, anyway. The required domestic content of batteries goes up to 80% in 2027, which should go a long way toward tightening everything up.
And the total cost? The subsidies amount to about $4 billion per year, and God only knows how much the critical material requirements are worth to domestic manufacturers. A horseback guess puts it at about $1 billion per year.
So that's what this temper tantrum is all about: $5 billion or so for consumers and mineral providers annually. What a drop in the bucket. What a waste of a good temper tantrum.
Manchin will need Republican voters to get re-elected in WVA, or if he runs for President, so he has to be seen as opposing Biden. Exactly why he quarrels with Biden is probably not important.
skeptonomist - good insight.
While Manchin can be difficult, I actually think the Democrats should be kissing up to him.
1. Manchin is the only Dem who could win his current seat in WV.
2. If Manchin runs under the No Labels brand, for President, it would likely hurt Biden
Love him or hate him, the Democrats need to keep Manchin as a friend
Sucking up to Manchin doesn't seem to help in the long run or even on a specific occasion. He isn't a "friend" and he's only technically a Democrat. He's volatile, unpredictable, and unreliable.
And there's a cost to keeping him happy to goes well beyond immediate concessions. The concessions that the Democratic Party would need to make to allow Joe Manchin to be competitive in West Virginia are basically destructive to the Biden agenda and are counterproductive in that they tend to alienate Democrats and independents elsewhere.
West Virginia is just one extremely conservative state. Is it worth sacrificing our chances in a myriad of other states just to give a boost to a guy who hates Democrats and everything we stand for? Or would it be better to write him off, establish a long-term mission there to turn things around (something that Manchin has forbidden) and hope for the best eventually.
Basically, the Democrats need to say "fuck Joe Manchin" and work to make his life a living Hell.
Mitch Guthman - there is merit to your perspective however, I wonder if you are appropriately weighing the risk. IF the Democrats attack Manchin he MAY (note he could do these things even if the Dem don't attack him)
- run for President as an independent
- withhold his votes in committee, possibly limiting nominations
- change over to be a Republican
etc
Machin still votes with the Democrats most of the time (approximately 90%): a Republican in the same seat will seldom vote with the Democrats. So in my book the risk to reward is clear: the Democrats need to suck up to Manchin.
As you observe, Manchin is egomaniacal enough and disloyal enough that he might easily do any or all of the things you mention. And he's already withheld votes or sunk important Democratic nominations, so sucking up to him (which Democrats have consistently been doing) doesn't guarantee loyalty.
On the other hand, it seems to me that whether he runs as an independent to increase Trump's chances or not depends not at all on our sucking up to Manchin but rather on his ego. He's obviously learned to take Democratic sucking-up and loyalty for granted.
But the one thing that I don't believe he can do is to change parties. There's already Republicans looking to move up and to run for Manchin's seat and the party's leadership is almost certainly not going to be successful in persuading anyone to step aside so that Manchin can be the Republican candidate.
Not obviously if kisisng up to him help him with republicans voters. Maybe attacking him actually helps him with them.
Could be. Let's try attacking Joe Manchin.
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Manchin has to throw a fit to maintain his Republican street cred. Otherwise they might think he is a libral.
That's more or less it, though by now I sense his schtick has become a farcical force of habit he's barely aware of. Also, he's clearly angry he's not going to be able to be a Senator until the age of 93, and perhaps in his heart of hearts he blames the Democratic Party for that.
But yeah, no way he outperforms Biden by 35+ points in WV next year, which is what it's going to take.
Manchin votes with Biden nearly 90% of the time. If he loses the next election you can bet the person who replaces him will vote with Republicans. Manchin knows he is facing a really tough election because West Virginia is now a solid red state.
But ins't the price of catering to Manchin the alienation of Democratic voters and independents in states that are likely to be much more highly competitive than West Virginia? The odds of Manchin holding on to his seat are extremely remote at best so I see very little value in wasting political capital on a fruitless mission to hold on to West Virginia, even at the cost of losing other senate and house seats (and perhaps the White House, too).
If he loses the next election you can bet the person who replaces him will vote with Republicans.
Yes. The next senator from WV will be a carbon copy of Tommy Tuberville or John Kennedy. Zero doubt. I'm not sure how that changes the equation. At this point if Manchin had an ounce of decency, he'd spend his final eighteen months in office trying to make the world a better place. But he'd rather spend it tarnishing his own legacy and greasing his path to a K Street or Fox News sinecure.
Mining for coal in WV, not so much for metals.
Developing mining for some of those critical metals in the US not a bad idea. Not really a profitable one, but maintaining an industry that can be ramped up in time of need (if doable) could make strategic sense.
Now, if that's what he wants, that should be the argument he makes.
Some of the new technologies for rare earth and lithium are low-impact. Pump up brackish mineral water, fraction it, send it back down. Dig up clays, fraction them, recover the water, send the parts you don't want back down.
When you measure the batteries needed for a renewable economy, they're heavy, and the less you drag them across the face of the earth, the less you need of them. Ultimately, we'd need less tons than we do using the fossil fuel economy, because more of it is recyclable and the parts just last longer.
We are not concerned with "tons" at this time. We are concerned with tons of CO2. Hence the focus on batteries.
May not be much metal mining in WVA but those coal miners would like to see mining jobs somewhere in the USA I’d think. Perhaps he had visions of processing in his state.
I third the idea that he needs to be seen at odds with the administration (and with the Ds in congress too) if he has a prayer of getting re-elected next year.
I also think there's a good chance that some particular mining or industrial interest in WV isn't going to enjoy quite as protected status as he originally had in mind. It might only be about a few billion bucks, but the important point for him is whose pockets the bucks end up in.
Here's a thought, Kevin. Manchin is a liar and is not acting in good faith. I realize this is hard for you to contemplate, but perhaps you should try.
Yeah, he's never getting any presumption of good faith back. Not after what he's pulled. And you know? Manchin surely knows that himself, making all such speechifying strictly camera fodder for the rubes.
Because EVs make fossil fuels look bad.
Wind and solar power overtakes coal for the first time ever in the US,
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/renewable-energy/wind-and-solar-power-overtakes-coal-for-the-first-time-ever-in-the-us
The irony being that coal is still used, although to a decreasing extent, to generate electricity which can end up powering electric cars. IC cars run on gasoline refined from oil which does not come from West Virginia.
EV doesn’t threaten coal which is what WVa cares about — unless someone has developed a coal-fueled car EVs.
Maybe he plans on making a big stink so when he runs on a third party ticket he can say "The Democratic Party and Joe Biden left me..." to resounding applause from his donors.
God, it would be so nice if we could just get 50 non-self-centered-asshole Democrats in the Senate for once. All these Manchins and Sinemas and Liebermans and whatnot really don't give people much reason to consistently vote Blue, with their constant need to jettison all the parts of the Democratic Party platform that motivated some voters to actually get their asses to the voting booth.
Manchin >> Sinema >> Lieberman
Manchin being from WV, I understand his schtick. Sinema, OK, somewhat loopy envisioning herself as some kind of McCain maverick in a purple state, maybe. But Lieberman, from a reliably blue state, and having been the VP nominee, there's a special place in Hell for him. Just because you're peeved that the party didn't rally around you in 2004. ('We got a statistical three way tie for third place' -- No, you came in 5th in NH, drop out!) And I don't care how aggrieved you feel, you do not appear at the Republican National Convention, especially when the Nation is nominating the first black major party candidate for President.
I'd vote for Manchin in WV, I'd vote against Sinema in any primary and for the Democrat if she stays and runs Independent. Anything that would make Lieberman's life a living hell, fair game.
Manchin likes attention & he especially likes to make a big show of differences with Biden & Democrats. I'm guessing he believes it will help him keep his seat. It won't. West Virginia voters are not going to vote for any Democrat for US senate or governor for many years. Ignorant, hateful bigotry is their only political ideology.
And I don't know why the EU is so upset - they're importing more Chinese EVs than we are. Making more battery factories and shorter supply chains will ultimately decrease their cost for batteries, too.
I think what has been said here is all true but also this: Manchin is a fossil fuel guy both publicly and privately. Fossil fuel people don't like subsidies for the competition. Hence he envisioned the credits to be as limited as possible. And now other powers have had a different purpose.
Not so sure Manchin is wrong re leasing. I'm looking at getting an EV. Only a few qualify for the $7500 credit, so I was only looking at those. The policy worked!
But...then I figured out I can get the credit on all the others too, I just have to lease instead of buy. And all those dealers are bending over backwards to make leasing easy.
So maybe the policy didn't really work. Instead of pushing me to buy a car assembled in the US etc, it's just pushing me to lease instead of buy.
The credit is for almost 20% of the cost of a new EV. That's a big carrot to use...to support leasing companies.
Why is Joe Manchin so mad at Joe Biden?
Because he has to seem reasonable where Democrats are not so he's the real victim here.
What a waste of a good temper tantrum.
Perhaps but a necessary one if he has any chance of winning re-election. Look for more of this in the weeks and months to come on a wide variety of topics whether legit beefs or not. The Biden Administration best course is just to ignore temper tantrum just as one would do with five-year old. Let em' cry til exhaustion. There's really not much that can be done to satisfy him in this political environment.
As for "The Other Joe in "24" Presidential campaign, while on paper it could certainly affect Biden's re-election's chances, I'm starting to take the view that any third-party campaign he would run would be more of a joke than anything. Why support him? "Vote for Joe and get more austerity!" "Vote for Joe and get more coal!" I mean, I can't think of any more miserable campaign than one for deficit reduction and to personally benefit from government subsidies. No one would support it or volunteer for it. It would be a top-down campaign of silly TV ads mainly attacking Biden rather than promoting Manchin because there's very little to promote. He lives on a houseboat and his daughter rakes in millions from Big Pharma. Yeah, that's someone I'd make a sign for. I'd starting to believe: "Let em' run. His one percent will be all the sweeter to witness."