End Chinese Dominance of Electric Vehicles in America Act of 2024

Floor Speech

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Ms. CHU. Madam Speaker, this bill is yet another excuse by Republicans to undermine the Inflation Reduction Act even as it delivers historic benefits to millions of Americans.

This landmark legislation extended and expanded the 30D tax credit to support the adoption of clean vehicles. These credits are not only supporting our transition to a clean economy, they are creating American jobs, bolstering American manufacturing, and strengthening American supply chains.

This bill would undercut the Biden-Harris administration's work to implement these credits under the guise of cracking down on foreign adversaries, and, yet again, this bill includes a harmful provision that would target immigrants who came to the United States from an adversary country but who themselves have nothing to do with their governments of origin.

This is the latest Republican bill this week that follows the shameful playbook of fear-mongering and discrimination that will harm Chinese and Asian-American immigrant communities without doing anything to improve national security or decrease our reliance on foreign energy.

Consider that there are countless immigrants who come from countries like China to the United States to start a business. Sometimes those immigrants are fleeing persecution in their country of origin. However, under this bill, if a Chinese immigrant starts a business that produces components for electric vehicle batteries, then any claimed vehicle that uses components from their business would be categorically ineligible from benefiting from the tax credit.

That means every car manufacturer would be punished for working with this business even if it is located here in the U.S. and employing American workers with absolutely no connection to any foreign government or foreign government-controlled entity.

Because of the way this bill was poorly drafted, it is even possible that it could target immigrants who have become U.S. citizens. This is simply xenophobic and wrong.

I want to be clear: There are legitimate national and economic security concerns that the U.S. faces with these foreign governments. To make sure we are addressing these concerns, it is important to prevent foreign adversaries benefiting from our tax credit, but that is, in fact, exactly what the Inflation Reduction Act already does and what the Biden-Harris administration has been upholding in their implementation of this law.

What I do staunchly object to is any legislation that creates enormous, disproportionate barriers for any individual solely because of their country of origin. The supposedly innocuous restriction of certain rights in the name of economic or national security can be just the start of the wholesale violation of our communities' civil rights.

The bottom line is this bill will hurt our transition to clean vehicles.

Madam Speaker, I oppose this bill, and I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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