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    In Ohio, Electric Cars Are Starting to Reshape Jobs and Companies

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    Erick Belmer has seen how tough the car business can be. He was working at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, when it shut down in 2019, devastating the community.Mr. Belmer, an industrial mechanic, got another job at a G.M. transmission factory in Toledo, but his commute is now 140 miles each way. His schedule gives him just a few hours with his family and a few hours of sleep.Yet far from being bitter, Mr. Belmer says he is excited. G.M. is converting his factory to produce electric motors, part of an industrial transformation that will redefine manufacturing regions and jobs around the world.G.M., Ford Motor and other carmakers announced investments of more than $50 billion in new factories in the United States last year, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. All but a small fraction of that money was to build and retool plants for electric vehicles and batteries.Mr. Belmer is one of thousands of people who will also have to pick up new skills. “It’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve,” he said at the Toledo factory. “But our guys are well equipped to handle this.”Mr. Belmer and Ohio are bellwethers of how the transition to electric vehicles will play out. G.M., Jeep, Honda Motor and parts makers employ many thousands of people across this state.Gas transmissions at G.M.’s plant in Toledo. G.M. has committed to retraining the workers there to make electric motors, and to investing $760 million to convert the plant’s assembly lines.Ohio’s experience may signal how the transition to electric vehicles will play out for workers.An electric drive unit on display at the G.M. plant.Ohio produces more internal combustion engines than any other state, making an adjustment to electric cars particularly urgent. Nearly 90,000 people work in Ohio for carmakers or parts suppliers, and several times that many are employed by businesses that serve those autoworkers and their families.The changes are putting Ohio at the forefront of a new technology that is critical to fighting climate change. But some jobs will become obsolete, and some companies will go bankrupt. It’s an open question whether the winners will outnumber the losers.“This is the largest transition in our industry since its inception,” said Tony Totty, the president of a United Auto Workers local that represents G.M. workers in Toledo.Mr. Totty is optimistic about the members of his local. But he is worried about other colleagues whose jobs are tied to gasoline engines, he said.There is “an expiration date on those facilities and those communities,” Mr. Totty said.Warren, in eastern Ohio, knows what happens when a carmaker leaves town. The city lost one-third of its population, about 20,000 people, after G.M. closed the factory in nearby Lordstown, which produced Chevrolet Cruze sedans, in 2019. Sales of that car had been fading as more Americans chose sport utility vehicles.Even before that shutdown, auto production jobs had been declining. U.S. automakers and their parts suppliers employed about one million people at the end of 2018, down from more than 1.3 million in 2000. In the years before G.M. closed the Lordstown plant, it had reduced shifts and pared its work force.“Our biggest export for the last 20 years has been talented young people,” said Rick Stockburger, the president of Brite Energy Innovators, an organization in Warren that offers work space, advice and funding to start-ups.Today, things are looking somewhat better. Ultium Cells, a joint venture of G.M. and LG Energy Solution, is ramping up production of batteries near the defunct factory.Tony Totty, the president of the United Auto Workers local that represents G.M.’s workers in Toledo, said the current moment represented “the largest transition in our industry since its inception.”Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer, has taken over the old G.M. plant and plans to produce electric vehicles and tractors there. The complex will also house an “electric vehicle academy” established by Foxconn and Youngstown State University to train workers.That surge in investment is helping to revive Warren’s tidy but sleepy downtown. Doug Franklin, the mayor, who worked for G.M. in Lordstown, said he was pleased recently to step into a local restaurant where “nobody knew me, because we had so many new people.”Mr. Franklin represents the optimistic view — that an industrial renaissance is underway. The pandemic and the supply chain chaos that it caused have made companies leery of components produced far away. That experience, plus billions in federal subsidies approved by Democrats last year, motivated manufacturers to build vehicles, batteries and other components in the United States.“We’re seeing a new level of hope that I haven’t seen in decades,” Mr. Franklin said.But community leaders in Warren are also aware that the transition comes with risks.Hopes that the old plant will become a buzzing electric vehicle factory have not panned out, so far. G.M. sold the factory to Lordstown Motors, a fledgling electric pickup truck company that ran into trouble and resold the plant to Foxconn.Executives at Foxconn, which has long assembled electronic devices but has little experience making cars, declined interview requests. It’s not clear when the company will mass-produce electric vehicles in Lordstown, if ever.The Rev. Todd Johnson, the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Warren and a member of the City Council, worries that his mostly African American parishioners won’t benefit from the new jobs.Mr. Johnson, whose parents worked for G.M., encourages young people to study subjects like robotics and coding, and has led after-church trips to a science and technology center in nearby Youngstown.“There are going to be opportunities coming,” he said, “and I desperately don’t want to see the next generation of our children miss out.”One pressing question is what will happen to people whose skills are no longer needed.Eric Gonzales, the executive director of G.M.’s Toledo factory, says the plant will need at least as many workers as it has today, as it replaces its gasoline models with electric ones.G.M. is dealing with that issue at the Toledo factory, Toledo Propulsion Systems, which makes transmissions that electric cars won’t need. The automaker has committed to retraining the Toledo workers to make electric motors, and to investing $760 million to convert assembly lines at the plant.If anything, G.M. will need more workers, said Eric Gonzales, the executive director of the factory, as it replaces gasoline models with electric cars. “We’re taking the employees with us.”The G.M. factory in Toledo will show whether established automakers can compete with Tesla, the fast-growing automaker that can focus all of its resources on electric vehicles because that’s all it makes. Established carmakers need to keep earning money from internal combustion vehicles while ramping up a new technology that is not yet profitable.G.M. has an advantage, Mr. Gonzales said, because it has factories equipped with sprinkler systems, high-voltage power and other essentials. “We already have the four walls here with the infrastructure,” he said, speaking above the din of clanking machinery. “Somebody new, they have very expensive capital costs.”Other auto executives prefer to start fresh. Volkswagen’s new Scout Motors unit looked at sites in Ohio and other states to produce electric pickup trucks and S.U.V.s, but chose to build a $2 billion factory in South Carolina.It’s cheaper and easier to build from scratch, said Scott Keogh, the chief executive of Scout. “You’re not juggling this classic dynamic of a legacy internal combustion engine plant where you need to inject a new electric vehicle,” he said.Workers placing batteries in hybrid vehicles at the Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio.Ohio is in intense competition with other states to attract investment. But Midwestern states, including Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, have been less successful than states in the South where Republican political leaders have courted investment aggressively — even as they denounce the Democratic policies that helped create the boom.Since 2020, automakers have announced investments of $51 billion in electric vehicle and battery production in the South, compared with $31 billion in states in the Great Lakes region, according to the Center for Automotive Research.Southern states tend to have lower labor costs, in part because most auto plants there are not unionized. This could pose a problem for the United Auto Workers and President Biden, who want the switch to electric vehicles to create more high-paying union jobs. It could well be that most of the new electric car and battery jobs will end up in the South, where unions face political opposition, and not in the Midwest, where unions have political clout — and where most of the jobs lost in combustion engine vehicles once were.Ohio has some things going for it. In March, Honda Motor said it would convert one of two assembly lines at its decades-old plant in Marysville, near Columbus, to build electric vehicles. Honda, a Japanese company, is also building a battery factory about an hour away, in Jeffersonville, with LG Energy Solution.In Ohio, Honda employs more than 14,000 people making cars and motors, and the company’s plans will show whether electric vehicles, which require fewer parts than gasoline cars, will create or destroy jobs.Honda’s assembly line of electric-car batteries at its Marysville plant.For the next several years, the transition will probably create jobs as carmakers make both gasoline and electric vehicles. Bob Nelson, the executive vice president of American Honda Motor, noted that, at the moment, there was a shortage of skilled labor. “We’re going to need everybody,” he said in Marysville, where Honda makes Accord sedans.What happens later is less certain. “When you don’t have the complexity that we’re used to, with engines and transmissions and mufflers and radiators and exhaust systems and all those components that aren’t going to be there anymore,” said Bruce Baumhower, the president of a United Auto Workers local that represents employees of auto suppliers in Ohio, “it makes me wonder what’s left.”Dana Incorporated, based in Maumee, near Toledo, is also grappling with that question. Dana’s employees — more than 40,000 of them — make axles, drive shafts and other parts. Electric vehicles need axles but typically do not need long drive shafts because the motors can be placed close to the wheels.James Kamsickas, Dana’s chief executive, has spent time in China and has been struck by the proliferation of electric vehicles there. Recognizing the threat to some of Dana’s products, Mr. Kamsickas acquired several firms with expertise in electric motors and other technology.James Kamsickas, right, Dana’s chief executive, has acquired several firms with expertise in electric motors and other technology.Dana now offers axles with electric motors built in, saving weight and energy, and it has deployed its expertise in gaskets to make equipment for cooling electric-car batteries that G.M. plans to use. Most of Dana’s orders are for products related to electric vehicles.Ohio’s economic future hinges on whether other companies make similar leaps. “You don’t have a choice,” Mr. Kamsickas said. “Sooner or later, you’d be a melting iceberg.” More

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    Lawmakers Rebuke Biden for Bypassing Congress in Trade Deal With Japan

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    A statement from two Democrats called the Biden administration’s deal “unacceptable,” saying it should have been made available to Congress and the public for review.WASHINGTON — Lawmakers on Tuesday issued a sharp rebuke of a limited trade deal the Biden administration reached with Japan, saying that it should have been made available to Congress and the public for review and that it lacked important protections for the environment and workers.In a statement viewed by The New York Times, Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, the Democratic ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the chairman of the Finance Committee, called the agreement “unacceptable.”“Without enforceable environmental or labor protections, the administration abandons worker-centric trade policy and jeopardizes our climate work by opening the door for another environmental catastrophe,” wrote the lawmakers, who are the two most powerful Democrats in Congress on trade issues.“Agreements should be developed transparently and made available to the public for meaningful review well before signing,” they added, “not after the ink is already dry.”The Biden administration announced late Monday that it had reached an agreement with Japan over supplies of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and nickel, which are used to make car batteries. The agreement provides a potential workaround for the Biden administration in its disagreement with allies over the terms of the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $370 billion to transition the United States to cleaner cars and energy sources.That law has angered some allies who were excluded from its benefits, which include generous tax incentives for companies that make electric vehicles in North America or source material for batteries from the United States or countries with which it has a free-trade agreement. That category does not include Japan or European Union countries.But because the Inflation Reduction Act does not technically define what constitutes a free-trade agreement, U.S. officials have found what they believe to be a workaround. They are arguing that countries will be able to meet the requirement by signing a more limited trade deal instead. The Treasury Department is expected to issue a proposed rule this week clarifying the provisions of the law..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.A fact sheet distributed late Monday by the Office of the United States Trade Representative said that the United States and Japan had promised to encourage higher labor and environmental standards for minerals that power electric vehicles. The parties also promised to promote more efficient use of resources and confer on how they review investments from foreign entities in the sector, among other pledges.In a call with reporters on Monday, a senior official said the Biden administration had consulted with Congress and received input from lawmakers. But the official said the administration had the authority to negotiate limited agreements without submitting them to Congress for approval.Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, had been expected to sign the agreement on Tuesday.“It’s clear this agreement is one of convenience,” Mr. Neal and Mr. Wyden said in the statement. “As we warned Ambassador Tai last week, the administration does not have the authority to unilaterally enter into free trade agreements.”Administration officials have argued that key members of Congress always intended U.S. allies to be included in the law’s benefits. But other lawmakers have also criticized the Biden administration for sidestepping Congress’s authority over new trade deals, a tactic that the Trump administration also frequently used.In a statement on Tuesday, Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said the agreement with Japan did not shift critical mineral supply chains from China.“Equally shameful is the fact that the Biden administration is distorting the plain text of U.S. law to write as many green corporate welfare checks as possible,” Mr. Smith said. “The administration has not been transparent with the American people and has ignored major concerns raised by Congress, including failing to provide an analysis of the effects this agreement would have on American workers.”Representative Dan Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, said on Tuesday that the administration was taking the wrong approach with the deal.“I believe the administration must come to Congress if they want to enter new free trade pacts,” he said in a statement. 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    U.S. and Japan Reach Deal on Battery Minerals

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    While the terms of the deal are limited, the agreement appears to provide a model for resolving recent trade spats between the United States and some of its closest allies.WASHINGTON — The United States and Japan have reached an agreement over supplies of the critical minerals used to make car batteries, a deal that will likely put to rest a contentious issue in the relationship with Japan and could be a model for resolving similar disputes with other trading partners.The agreement provides a potential workaround for the Biden administration in its disagreement not only with Japan, but with the European Union and other allies over the terms of its new climate legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act, which invests $370 billion to transition the United States to cleaner cars and energy sources, has angered some allies who were excluded from its benefits.While the scope of the agreement is limited, the Biden administration has also promoted the deal as the beginning of a new framework that the United States and its allies hope to build with like-minded countries to develop more stable supply chains for electric vehicles that do not rely as heavily on China. American officials have argued that China’s dominance of the global car battery industry, including the processing of the minerals needed to make the batteries, leaves the United States highly vulnerable.According to a fact sheet distributed by the Office of the United States Trade Representative late Monday, the United States and Japan promised to encourage higher labor and environmental standards for minerals that are key to powering electric vehicles, like lithium, cobalt and nickel. The countries said they would also promote more efficient use of resources and confer on how they reviewed investments from foreign entities in the sector, among other pledges.Katherine Tai, the United States trade representative, was expected to sign the agreement Tuesday alongside Koji Tomita, the Japanese ambassador to the United States. The United States and Europe are separately negotiating a similar agreement..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Ms. Tai said the announcement was “proof of President Biden’s commitment to building resilient and secure supply chains.” She added that “Japan is one of our most valued trading partners, and this agreement will enable us to deepen our existing bilateral relationship.”The deal appears to be aimed at expanding certain provisions of the climate legislation, which offers generous tax incentives for electric vehicles that are built in North America or source the material for their batteries from the United States or countries with which the United States has a free-trade agreement. The United States has free-trade agreements with 20 countries but not the European Union or Japan, and foreign allies have complained that the legislation will disadvantage their companies and lure investment away from them.But since the Inflation Reduction Act does not technically define what constitutes a “free-trade agreement,” American officials have found what they believe to be a workaround. They are arguing that countries will be able to meet the requirement by signing a more limited trade deal instead. Later this week, the Treasury Department is expected to issue a proposed rule clarifying the law’s provisions.President Biden and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced after a meeting earlier this month that their governments were pursuing a similar deal. But European officials said that arrangement could take more time to finalize, since the European Union must submit such agreements to its member states for their approval.While the administration argued that key members of Congress always intended American allies to be included in the law’s benefits, some lawmakers have protested these arrangements, saying the Biden administration is sidestepping Congress’s authority over new trade deals.“The executive branch, in my view, has begun to embrace a go-it-alone trade policy,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said last week, as Ms. Tai testified before the committee. Congress’s role in U.S. trade policy “is black-letter law, colleagues, and it’s unacceptable to even offer the argument otherwise,” he added. More

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    U.S. and Europe Angle for New Deal to Resolve Climate Spat

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    American and European officials are trying to reach agreement on the outlines of a limited trade deal that could help resolve a major rift over America’s new climate legislation.WASHINGTON — American and European officials meeting in Washington this week are trying to agree on the outlines of a limited trade deal that would allow European companies to qualify for some of the benefits of the Biden administration’s new climate legislation, in a bid to assuage a major source of tension between the allies.The governments hope to announce their intention to begin negotiations over such an agreement as soon as Friday, when President Biden is set to meet with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, at the White House.American officials have also been carrying out similar conversations with the governments of Japan and the United Kingdom to see if some type of limited new agreement could be struck that would also offer Japanese and British companies certain benefits under the law.At the center of the debate is the Inflation Reduction Act, a $370 billion bill that President Biden signed last year to try to mitigate climate change by transforming U.S. power generation and the car industry. The bill offers generous tax credits to American consumers to purchase new and used electric vehicles, but it imposes tough restrictions on the types of vehicles that can benefit from these rules, in ways that disadvantage foreign carmakers.The law specifies that, to receive a tax credit, cars must be assembled in North America and source the material for their batteries from North America, or from countries with which the United States has a free-trade agreement. Despite close ties, the United States does not have a free-trade agreement with the European Union, Japan or the United Kingdom.The passage of the law has prompted harsh criticism from allies, who say companies in their countries will be penalized. European officials have been particularly outspoken, arguing that the bill comes at a delicate time for a European economy that is already contending with disruptions from the war in Ukraine and skyrocketing energy prices.The dispute has raised the prospect of a subsidy war between the United States and the European Union, and threatened to strain relations at a time when both sides are trying to maintain a united front against Russia.“I don’t think U.S. government officials anticipated this level of pushback and this level of disdain against this massive climate bill,” said Olga Khakova, the deputy director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. But she said emotions had now subsided a bit. “We are in this mode right now where we want to find a solution.”An electric Volkswagen at a factory in Germany. Despite close ties, the United States and the European Union do not have a free-trade agreement.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe rift has set off a scramble within the U.S. government to try to scrape together some type of new trade deal that could be signed with allied governments to allow their companies to benefit from some of the law’s tax credits. With such an agreement, for example, a company based in the European Union could help to supply lithium, nickel or other battery materials for electric vehicles made in North America.A Treasury official said that any new trade agreements would be evaluated during a rule-making process to ensure that they comply with the critical mineral requirements in the legislation. The official pointed to Chinese control over critical mineral extraction as a reason for the need to make the supply chains of the United States and like-minded partners strong.A U.S. official said that the administration had been engaged in ongoing consultations with Congress, and that those briefings, and conversations with unions and private industry, would continue in the coming weeks.The Treasury Department, in a white paper published in December, said that the Inflation Reduction Act did not define the term “free trade agreement,” and that the Treasury secretary could identify additional free-trade agreements for the purposes of the critical-minerals requirement going forward.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said last month that the Biden administration was considering limited trade deals focused on critical minerals as a solution, and she suggested that these could be done without the approval of Congress. She emphasized that the intent of the law was not for the United States to steal jobs from Europe and that the law was meant to be aligned with the administration’s “friend-shoring” agenda..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I think the word ‘free trade’ was meant to mean reliable friends and partners with whom we can feel we have secure supply chains,” Ms. Yellen said on the sidelines of the Group of 20 finance ministers meetings in India last month. “We’ve been very clear with Europe that this is not a subsidy war.”With input from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, officials from the Treasury Department have prepared a document spelling out what kind of deal would constitute a “free-trade agreement” for the purposes of the legislation, according to people familiar with the plans.It is not clear how quickly the solution could be completed, however, as the white paper said the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would seek public comment on “what criteria should be used to identify free-trade agreements for the purposes of the critical-minerals requirement.”In a briefing on Friday, a European official said Europe and the United States could announce by the end of this week a commitment to forge a new limited trade deal, most likely focused on supply chains for critical minerals. Unlike a traditional free-trade agreement, which entails reducing barriers to trade between partners, this agreement would not involve lowering tariffs on either side, and the parties would aim to flesh out the agreement in days or weeks, rather than months, the European official said.“I think the word ‘free trade’ was meant to mean reliable friends and partners with whom we can feel we have secure supply chains,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said at the Group of 20 meeting last month.Aijaz Rahi/Associated PressThe official added that the agreement would need to be legally binding, and would still involve seeking some type of approval from European Union member states. In the United States, the agreement could come in the form of an executive order from the Biden administration, and without requiring the approval of Congress, the official suggested.One irony is that neither the European Union nor the United States is a major source of the critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries. But some officials have suggested that the partnership would form a foundation for a group that could be expanded over time to include countries with larger supplies of lithium, cobalt, nickel and other minerals.While analysts said a new deal with Europe could in practice satisfy the requirements of the law, it would not really resemble a free-trade agreement, as such agreements have come to be understood.Free-trade deals are legal agreements that the World Trade Organization defines as covering “substantially all trade” between countries, including a broad range of goods and, typically, services. They usually take years to negotiate and, in the United States, require the approval of Congress.Scott Lincicome, the director of general economics at the Cato Institute, said that the Biden administration’s authority to strike such trade pacts was questionable but that it was unlikely that anyone would try to mount a legal challenge to them.“Everyone in the room knows that this is not kosher, but there’s not really anything anybody can do about it,” Mr. Lincicome said.Political appetite for striking new free-trade deals has diminished in the United States in recent years, in part because of a perception that such pacts have helped multinational corporations move factories and jobs offshore.Efforts to strike expansive trade deals with Europe and a group of Asian countries during the Obama administration fizzled, in part because of that political opposition. During the Trump administration, the United States signed a series of limited trade deals with South Korea, Japan and China that were carried out through executive orders, not by congressional approval.Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the limited deal would mollify the Europeans, and that U.S.-E.U. economic relations were too important “to not allow the Europeans under the tent in some way or another.” But it could escalate complaints from other trading partners, like South Korea, that don’t feel as though their concerns have been taken care of, he said.South Korea already has a comprehensive free-trade agreement with the United States, but it has other criticisms of the climate law, centering on how the current terms exclude electric vehicles made by Hyundai from receiving tax credits. “Once you make accommodations for one, the pressure grows to make accommodations for others,” he said.It remains unclear how Congress will respond. Lawmakers have expressed concerns that the administration is not adhering to the law’s original intent of promoting U.S. manufacturing. Many also disapprove of efforts by the executive branch to bypass congressional authority in approving trade deals.But Democrats may also be sympathetic to the effort to smooth over relations with Europeans, and reluctant to reopen debate over their signature climate legislation. And at least one key lawmaker, Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, has said he didn’t realize that the European Union lacked a free-trade agreement with the United States in the first place.Still, the dispute has elicited some criticism that American officials are going to great lengths to mollify Europeans, especially given that the European Union imposes some trade barriers on the United States, like a relatively high tariff on imported U.S. cars.John G. Murphy, the senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said it was his group’s view that the Biden administration should fight against various E.U. policies that discriminate against American companies “with the same doggedness European officials have brought to their complaints about the I.R.A.” More

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    Climate Change May Bring New Era of Trade Wars, as E.U. and U.S. Spar

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    Countries are pursuing new solutions to try to mitigate climate change. More trade fights are likely to come hand in hand.WASHINGTON — Efforts to mitigate climate change are prompting countries across the world to embrace dramatically different policies toward industry and trade, bringing governments into conflict.These new clashes over climate policy are straining international alliances and the global trading system, hinting at a future in which policies aimed at staving off environmental catastrophe could also result in more frequent cross-border trade wars.In recent months, the United States and Europe have proposed or introduced subsidies, tariffs and other policies aimed at speeding the green energy transition. Proponents of the measures say governments must move aggressively to expand sources of cleaner energy and penalize the biggest emitters of planet-warming gases if they hope to avert a global climate disaster.But critics say these policies often put foreign countries and companies at a disadvantage, as governments subsidize their own industries or charge new tariffs on foreign products. The policies depart from a decades-long status quo in trade, in which the United States and Europe often joined forces through the World Trade Organization to try to knock down trade barriers and encourage countries to treat one another’s products more equally to boost global commerce.Now, new policies are pitting close allies against one another and widening fractures in an already fragile system of global trade governance, as countries try to contend with the existential challenge of climate change.“The climate crisis requires economic transformation at a scale and speed humanity has never attempted in our 5,000 years of written history,” said Todd N. Tucker, the director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute, who is an advocate for some of the measures. “Unsurprisingly, a task of this magnitude will require a new policy tool kit.”The current system of global trade funnels tens of millions of shipping containers stuffed with couches, clothing and car parts from foreign factories to the United States each year, often at astonishingly low prices. But the prices that consumers pay for these goods do not take into account the environmental harm generated by the far-off factories that make them, or by the container ships and cargo planes that carry them across the ocean.A factory in Chengde, China. U.S. officials believe they must lessen a dangerous dependence on goods from China.Fred Dufour/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAmerican and European officials argue that more needs to be done to discourage trade in products made with more pollution or carbon emissions. And U.S. officials believe they must lessen a dangerous dependence on China in particular for the materials needed to power the green energy transition, like solar panels and electric vehicle batteries.The Biden administration is putting in place generous subsidies to encourage the production of clean energy technology in the United States, such as tax credits for consumers who buy American-made clean cars and companies building new plants for solar and wind power equipment. Both the United States and Europe are introducing taxes and tariffs aimed at encouraging less environmentally harmful ways of producing goods.Biden administration officials have expressed hopes that the climate transition could be a new opportunity for cooperation with allies. But so far, their initiatives seem to have mainly stirred controversy when the United States is already under attack for its response to recent trade rulings.The administration has publicly flouted several decisions of World Trade Organization panels that ruled against the United States in trade disputes involving national security issues. In two separate announcements in December, the Office of the United States Trade Representative said it would not change its policies to abide by W.T.O. decisions.But the biggest source of contention has been new tax credits for clean energy equipment and vehicles made in North America that were part of a sweeping climate and health policy bill that President Biden signed into law last year. European officials have called the measure a “job killer” and expressed fears they will lose out to the United States on new investments in batteries, green hydrogen, steel and other industries. In response, European Union officials began outlining their own plan this month to subsidize green energy industries — a move that critics fear will plunge the world into a costly and inefficient “subsidy war.”The United States and European Union have been searching for changes that could be made to mollify both sides before the U.S. tax-credit rules are settled in March. But the Biden administration appears to have only limited ability to change some of the law’s provisions. Members of Congress say they intentionally worded the law to benefit American manufacturing.Biden administration is putting in place subsidies to encourage the production of clean energy technology in the United States, such as tax credits for consumers who buy American-made clean cars.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesEuropean officials have suggested that they could bring a trade case at the World Trade Organization that might be a prelude to imposing tariffs on American products in retaliation.Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, said that the European Union was committed to finding solutions but that negotiations needed to make progress or the European Union would face “even stronger calls” to respond.“We need to follow the same rules of the game,” he said.Anne Krueger, a former official at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, said the potential pain of American subsidies on Japan, South Korea and allies in Europe was “enormous.”“When you discriminate in favor of American companies and against the rest of the world, you’re hurting yourself and hurting others at the same time,” said Ms. Krueger, now a senior fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.But in a letter last week, a collection of prominent labor unions and environmental groups urged Mr. Biden to move forward with the plans without delays, saying outdated trade rules should not be used to undermine support for a new clean energy economy.“It’s time to end this circular firing squad where countries threaten and, if successful, weaken or repeal one another’s climate measures through trade and investment agreements,” said Melinda St. Louis, the director of the Global Trade Watch for Public Citizen, one of the groups behind the letter.Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, has pressed the United States to negotiate more on its climate-related subsidies for American manufacturing.Stephanie Lecocq/EPA, via ShutterstockOther recent climate policies have also spurred controversy. In mid-December, the European Union took a major step toward a new climate-focused trade policy as it reached a preliminary agreement to impose a new carbon tariff on certain imports. The so-called carbon border adjustment mechanism would apply to products from all countries that failed to take strict actions to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.The move is aimed at ensuring that European companies that must follow strict environmental regulations are not put at a disadvantage to competitors in countries where laxer environmental rules allow companies to produce and sell goods more cheaply. While European officials argue that their policy complies with global trade rules in a way that U.S. clean energy subsidies do not, it has still rankled countries like China and Turkey.The Biden administration has also been trying to create an international group that would impose tariffs on steel and aluminum from countries with laxer environmental policies. In December, it sent the European Union a brief initial proposal for such a trade arrangement.The idea still has a long way to go to be realized. But even as it would break new ground in addressing climate change, the approach may also end up aggravating allies like Canada, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea, which together provided more than half of America’s foreign steel last year.Under the initial proposal, these countries would theoretically have to produce steel as cleanly as the United States and Europe, or face tariffs on their products.A steel plant in Belgium. Under the initial proposal, countries would theoretically have to produce steel as cleanly as the United States and Europe, or face tariffs.Kevin Faingnaert for The New York TimesProponents of new climate-focused trade measures say discriminating against foreign products, and goods made with greater carbon emissions, is exactly what governments need to build up clean energy industries and address climate change.“You really do need to rethink some of the fundamentals of the system,” said Ilana Solomon, an independent trade consultant who previously worked with the Sierra Club.Ms. Solomon and others have proposed a “climate peace clause,” under which governments would commit to refrain from using the World Trade Organization and other trade agreements to challenge one another’s climate policies for 10 years.“The complete legitimacy of the global trading system has never been more in question,” she said.In the United States, support appears to be growing among both Republicans and Democrats for more nationalist policies that would encourage domestic production and discourage imports of dirtier goods — but that would also most likely violate World Trade Organization rules.Most Republicans do not support the idea of a national price on carbon. But they have shown more willingness to raise tariffs on foreign products that are made in environmentally damaging ways, which they see as a way to protect American jobs from foreign competition.Robert E. Lighthizer, a chief trade negotiator for the Trump administration, said there was “great overlap” between Republicans and Democrats on the idea of using trade tools to discourage imports of polluting products from abroad.“I’m coming at it to get more American employed and with higher wages,” he said. “You shouldn’t be able to get an economic advantage over some guy working in Detroit, trying to support his family, from pollution, by manufacturing overseas.” More

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    Workers at E.V. Battery Plant in Ohio Vote to Unionize

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    The result, at a plant owned by General Motors and a South Korean company, is a milestone for the auto union in organizing electric vehicle workers.In an early test of President Biden’s promise that the transition to electric vehicles will create high-paying union jobs, employees at a battery plant in eastern Ohio have voted to join the United Automobile Workers union.The outcome appears to create the first formal union at a major U.S. electric car, truck or battery cell manufacturing plant not owned entirely by one of the Big Three automakers. The factory, known as Ultium Cells, is a joint venture of General Motors and the South Korean manufacturer LG Energy Solution.A union statement early Friday said the result was 710 to 16 in two days of balloting.“As the auto industry transitions to electric vehicles, new workers entering the auto sector at plants like Ultium are thinking about their value and worth,” said Ray Curry, the U.A.W. president, in the statement. “This vote shows that they want to be a part of maintaining the high standards and wages that U.A.W. members have built in the auto industry.”The National Labor Relations Board said it had received the tally and would move to certify the result if no objections were filed.Mr. Biden issued a statement after the vote saluting the Ultium workers and declaring, “In my administration, American and union workers can and will lead the world in manufacturing once again.”While existing plants owned by the three legacy U.S. automakers have maintained a union presence as they have shifted production to electric vehicles, the union must start from scratch at plants like the one in Ohio and joint ventures through which Ford Motor is building battery factories in the South. Other electric vehicle companies, like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, are also not unionized.The autoworkers union has long worried about the transition to electric vehicles, first noting in a 2018 research paper that electric vehicles require about 30 percent less labor to produce than internal combustion vehicles. The paper also pointed out that the United States was falling far behind Asian and European countries in establishing an electric vehicle supply chain.Read More on Electric VehiclesGoing Mainstream: U.S. sales of battery-powered cars jumped 70 percent in the first nine months of the year, as non-affluent buyers are choosing electric vehicles to save money on gas.A Bonanza for Red States: No Republican in Congress voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. But their states will greatly benefit from the investments in electric vehicles spurred by the law.Rivian Recall: The electric-car maker said that it was recalling 13,000 vehicles after identifying an issue that could affect drivers’ ability to steer some of its vehicles.China’s Thriving Market: More electric cars will be sold in the country this year than in the rest of the world combined, as its domestic market accelerates ahead of the global competition.A report last year by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, estimated that the transition to electric vehicles could cost at least 75,000 U.S. auto industry jobs by 2030 if the government did not provide additional subsidies for domestic production, but could create 150,000 jobs if those subsidies were forthcoming.An ambitious climate and health care bill signed by Mr. Biden in August provided tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for the industry, raising the probability that auto industry jobs will be created rather than lost.But while Congress included certain incentives for union-scale wages in the construction of new plants, it ultimately removed elements of the legislation that would have helped ensure the creation of union jobs, such as a $4,500 incentive for vehicles assembled at a unionized facility in the United States.Josh Bivens, an author of the Economic Policy Institute report, said in an interview that he was pleasantly surprised that the administration managed to pass strong incentives for domestic production of electric vehicles. But whether the incentives will lead to good jobs, he added, is an open question.“There’s no real explicit subsidy or incentive to make these unionized or even high-wage,” Mr. Bivens said.Under the union’s contract with the Big Three automakers, veteran rank-and-file production workers make about $32 per hour. New hires start at a substantially lower wage and work their way up to that amount over several years.By contrast, companies that make electric vehicles or their components typically pay workers hourly wages in the midteens to the mid-20s.The union campaign at the Ohio plant was one of the easier tests facing U.A.W. organizers at electric vehicle facilities. The plant is in Warren, within a mile or two of a unionized General Motors facility in Lordstown that operated for decades before the company idled it and then sold it in 2019, making local residents familiar with the benefits of union membership.And while Ultium did not agree to a so-called card check process that could have bypassed a union election, it also did not wage a campaign seeking to dissuade workers from unionizing, according to a U.A.W. spokeswoman. Mary T. Barra, the General Motors chief executive, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television last week that the company was “very supportive” of the plant’s unionization.It is less clear how successful the union will be at organizing other new electric vehicle plants, such as an Ultium facility being built in Tennessee or three factories being built jointly by Ford and the South Korean battery maker SK Innovation in Kentucky and Tennessee, where the political culture is less hospitable to unions. Battery packs, which can cost around $15,000, are by far the most expensive component of an electric vehicle powertrain, the key parts and systems that power a car.The task may be even taller at plants owned solely by foreign manufacturers, such as an SK battery plant in Georgia or a huge plant that Hyundai is building in the state. The union has for decades struggled to organize so-called transplant facilities owned by foreign automakers in the South.Workers at the Ultium plant in Ohio, which began production this year, cited pay and safety issues as key reasons for unionizing. Dominic Giovannone, who helps fabricate battery cells, said he was now making about $16.50 per hour — a roughly $8 pay cut from his job at a plastic bag factory. He said the Ultium job attracted him because the plant was far closer to his home than his previous job had been.An Ultium spokeswoman said that hourly pay for rank-and-file workers ranged from $15 to $22 depending on experience and skills, and that the company paid a quarterly bonus and provided benefits as soon as employment began.Mr. Giovannone said that while the health care benefits were “phenomenal,” he wished the 401(k) match were more generous. He also said workers in his department were frequently required to handle harsh chemicals without enough information from the company to ensure that they did so safely.The lack of specific guidance on chemicals “is a big concern in the plant,” he said, adding that supervisors had not been very responsive when he and his co-workers prodded them on the issue.Ethan Surgenavic, a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning specialist at the plant, whose department is responsible for indoor conditions such as keeping humidity extremely low around certain components, said he, too, had taken a large pay cut to work there. He now makes $29 per hour, down from about $42, but he said the job also substantially reduced his commute.He agreed that the health benefits were strong but shared Mr. Giovannone’s concerns about safety. Mr. Surgenavic said that when workers raise questions about safety rules, “it feels like it lands on deaf ears.” He cited worries about having to change a machine’s air filter in a room that contains toxic material.The Ultium spokeswoman said that signs were posted throughout the plant with QR codes linking to safety information, and that paper handouts were also available. She said that the company had specific safety standards for issues like respiratory protection and chemical control and that it encouraged all workers to report concerns.The union campaign at Ultium took place against the backdrop of a recent U.A.W. election in which reformist candidates defeated several members of the longtime leadership caucus, citing rampant corruption within the union and members’ frustrations with limited improvements in their contracts over the past decade.In an interview, Shawn Fain, who will face the incumbent president, Mr. Curry, in a runoff election, said the union’s relative lack of progress in organizing electric vehicle plants reflected years of complacency with the union’s leadership.Mr. Fain said the Big Three automakers pursued electric vehicle joint ventures with foreign companies to make it harder for workers there to unionize. “The whole system is put together to circumvent the U.A.W. and any type of relationships with current members and employees,” he said. “At the first sign of that, our leadership should have went to war.”General Motors said it relied on joint ventures to bring in expertise that complemented its existing battery technology and to help meet the projects’ enormous capital requirements. The U.A.W. did not respond to a request for comment. More

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    Did You Recently Buy an Electric Vehicle? We Want to Hear About It.

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    People are buying electric vehicles at a record pace, snapping up battery-powered cars and trucks as quickly as automakers can make them. In just a few years, electric vehicles have gone from expensive novelties for the superrich to a must-have product for many people.We’re doing a story on who’s buying electric cars today, hoping to better understand people’s decisions and what they think of the vehicles. We particularly want to speak to people who bought their first electric vehicle in the last year or so.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you.Tell us about your electric car purchase.Required questions are noted with * More

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    This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car Industry

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    Hiding a thousand feet below the earth’s surface in this patch of northern Minnesota wetlands are ancient mineral deposits that some view as critical to fueling America’s clean energy future.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesA company called Talon Metals is drilling here around the clock, extracting samples of rock rich with nickel in a bid to become the country’s sole source of a material used to power zero-emission vehicles.But some locals are fighting the mine, for fear it could pollute their environment. The pushback hints at how difficult it may be to build an all-American supply chain that powers the country’s transition to electric vehicles.This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car IndustryTAMARACK, Minn. — In this isolated town of about 100 people, dozens of employees are at work for Talon Metals, drawing long cylinders of rock from deep in the earth and analyzing their contents. They liken their work to a game of Battleship — each hole drilled allows them to better map out where a massive and long-hidden mineral deposit is lurking below.The company is proposing to build an underground mine near Tamarack that would produce nickel, a highly sought-after mineral that is used to power electric vehicles. It would be a profitable venture for Talon, which has a contract to supply nickel for Tesla’s car batteries, and a step forward in the country’s race to develop domestic supply chains to feed the growing demand for electric vehicles.But mines that extract metal from sulfide ore, as this one would, have a poor environmental record in the United States, and an even more checkered footprint globally. While some in the area argue the mine could bring good jobs to a sparsely populated region, others are deeply fearful that it could spoil local lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River. There is also concern that it could endanger the livelihoods and culture of Ojibwe tribes whose members live just over a mile from Talon’s land and have gathered wild rice here for generations.Talon says it will invest heavily to design the world’s greenest and most responsible mine yet, one that they say “Joe Biden can love.” But some people in the community remain skeptical, including about the company’s promises to respect Indigenous rights, like the tribes’ authority over lands where their members hunt and gather food. Part of that mistrust stems from the fact that Talon’s minority partner, Rio Tinto, provoked outrage in 2020 by blowing up a 46,000-year-old system of Aboriginal caves in Australia in a search for iron ore.Kelly Applegate, the commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, said he was “very concerned” about how the mine might damage the environment. “This again is an assault on Native culture, a disturbance of our way of being, another trauma that could potentially happen to our people,” he said.He described it as a “huge environmental justice issue” to mine local resources for electric cars that the tribe’s members would be unable to afford. Except for some wealthy homeowners who spend their summers around the lakes, the area is one of the poorest parts of Minnesota. Native Americans in Minnesota experience poverty at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the state. Locals say the only Tesla for miles is Talon’s company car.“Talon and Rio Tinto will come and go — greatly enriched by their mining operation. But we, and the remnants of the Tamarack mine, will be here forever,” Mr. Applegate said.The project, which lies 50 miles west of Lake Superior, highlights some of the challenges that are emerging as the Biden administration tries to transition America to electric vehicles. The administration has said it wants to make the supply chains for batteries more resilient by sourcing minerals inside North America. But that desire could bring its own potential for environmental damage and infringement of the rights of Indigenous Americans. Much of the nation’s supply of battery materials is near tribal land.The world urgently needs to switch to cleaner cars to limit the global damage from climate change, many climate activists say. Last week, California approved a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.But current supply chains for electric vehicle batteries — and the batteries that would be needed for the electric grid that would charge that fleet of vehicles — rely on some adversarial and heavily polluting foreign nations. Much of the nickel that goes into car batteries is produced by strip mines that have decimated rainforests in Indonesia and the Philippines, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide before being refined in Chinese factories powered by coal.Read More on Electric VehiclesBanning Gasoline Cars: California is leading the way in the push to electrify the nation’s car fleet with a plan to ban sales of new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035, but the rule will face several challenges.Inflation Reduction Act: The law extends tax incentives in an effort to steer more U.S. consumers toward electric cars. But new rules complicate the qualification process.Plug-In Hybrids: After falling behind all-electric cars, U.S. sales of plug-in hybrids have been surging. The high cost of electric cars and gasoline have given them an opening.Car Crashes: Tesla and other automakers capture data from their vehicles to operate their products. Experts say the collected information could also improve road safety.Another source of nickel is a massive mining operation north of the Arctic Circle in Norilsk, Russia, which has produced so much sulfur dioxide that a plume of the toxic gas is big enough to be seen from space. Other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, appear to have been mined or refined with the use of child or forced labor.With global demand for electric vehicles projected to grow sixfold by 2030, the dirty origins of this otherwise promising green industry have become a looming crisis. The Democrats’ new tax and climate bill devotes nearly $400 billion to clean energy initiatives over the next decade, including electric vehicle tax credits and financing for companies that manufacture clean cars in the United States.New domestic high-tech mines and factories could make this supply chain more secure, and potentially less damaging to the global environment. But skeptics say those facilities may still pose a risk to the air, soil and water that surrounds them, and spark a fierce debate about which communities might bear those costs.The project is near lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River, and where Ojibwe tribes have gathered wild rice for generations.The potential risks to plants and wildlife come from the sulfide ores; the ores, in which materials like copper and nickel are lodged, can leach out sulfuric acid and heavy metals. More than a dozen former copper mines in the United States are now Superfund sites, contaminated locations where taxpayers can end up on the hook for cleanup.In January, the Biden administration canceled leases for another copper-nickel mine near a Minnesota wilderness area, saying the Trump administration had improperly renewed them.Talon Metals insists that it will have no such problems. “We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy. “It’s not a choice.”The company is using high-tech equipment to map underground flows of water in the area and create a 3-D model of the ore, so it can mine “surgically” while leaving other parts of the earth undisturbed, Mr. Malan said. Talon is also promising to use technology that will safely store the mine’s toxic byproducts and do its mining far underground, in deep bedrock where groundwater doesn’t typically penetrate.Talon has teamed up with the United Steelworkers union on work force development. And Rio Tinto has won a $2.2 million Department of Energy grant to explore capturing carbon near the site, which may allow the mine to market its products as zero emission.“We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy at Talon.In a statement, Talon said it was committed to “meaningful consultations with tribal sovereign governments and tribal people” and producing a mine plan that addressed their concerns, as well as working with tribal governments interested in economic benefit sharing.The company has held several informational meetings with tribal staff and members, but some tribal members say they still need far more details from Talon about its plans.If the mine comes online in 2026 as scheduled, it will be positioned to feed a hungry market. The United States currently has one operating nickel mine, in Michigan, but its resources will be exhausted by 2026.In Washington, a bipartisan consensus is growing that the country should reduce its reliance on risky overseas minerals. To limit global warming to the levels that advanced countries have agreed on, the International Energy Agency estimates, the world will need roughly 20 times as much nickel and cobalt by 2040 as it had in 2020 and 40 times as much lithium.Recycling could play a bigger role in supplying these materials by the end of the decade, and some new car batteries do not use any nickel. Yet nickel is still highly sought after for electric trucks and higher-end cars, because it increases a vehicle’s range.The infrastructure law passed last year devoted $7 billion to developing the domestic supply chain for critical minerals. The climate and tax law also sets ambitious thresholds for ensuring that electric vehicles that receive tax incentives are partly U.S.-made.Elisabeth Kachinske logged core samples containing nickel at Talon’s offices in Tamarack, Minn.Talon’s proposed mine could help Tesla meet those thresholds. Tesla gets its nickel from China, Australia, New Caledonia and Canada, and its chief executive, Elon Musk, has begged miners to produce more.Some environmental and left-leaning groups that have long been skeptical of domestic mining are adjusting those positions, arguing that resources are needed for the energy transition.Collin O’Mara, the chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said that there was a growing need for battery materials that were mined responsibly, and that Talon was promising to use state-of-the-art techniques to minimize the mine’s footprint.But he acknowledged that for local residents it would still take a leap of faith in new technologies and Talon’s ability to apply them. “There still isn’t an example of an existing mine that has had no impacts,” he said.The economic potential — and the environmental risks — may go far beyond a single mine. The entire region is home to deposits of nickel, copper and cobalt, which were formed 1.1 billion years ago from a volcano that spewed out miles of liquid magma.Talon has leased 31,000 acres of land in the area, covering an 11-mile geological feature deep under the swamp. The company has zealously drilled and examined the underground resources along one of those 11 miles, and discovered several other potential satellite deposits.Elizabeth Skinaway, a member of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, is especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which she has gathered in lakes near the proposed mine for 43 years.In August, the company announced that it had also acquired land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to explore for more nickel.Talon will start Minnesota’s environmental review process within a few months, and the company says it anticipates a straightforward review. But legal challenges for proposed mines can regularly stretch to a decade or more, and some living near the project say they will do what they can to fight the mine.Elizabeth Skinaway and her sister, Jean Skinaway-Lawrence, members of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, are especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which Ms. Skinaway has been gathering in lakes several miles from the proposed mine for 43 years.Ms. Skinaway acknowledges the need to combat climate change, which also threatens the rice. But she sees little justice in using the same kind of profit-driven, extractive industry that she said had long plundered native lands and damaged the global environment.“The wild rice, the gift from the creator, that’s going to be gone, from the sulfide that’s going to leach into the river and the lakes,” she said. “It’s just a really scary thought.”“We were here first,” said her sister. “We should be heard.”The Talon drill site near Tamarack. More