The Biden regime has been on a rampage against the American middle class ever since the 2020 election was stolen. The latest move by the regime to cripple America comes courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Biden has had his unelected bureaucrats in the EPA pass a new rule to destroy the big rig trucking industry, by forcing companies to start using all-electric big rigs post-2030. This rule will be so disastrous for the economy that even congressional Republicans have taken notice of it.
Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-ID) and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) have jointly authored a resolution to invoke the Congressional Review Act against Biden’s new Phase 3 Emissions rule. This is a legal maneuver that was created in 1996 that allows Congress to nullify rules passed by faceless bureaucrats in unelected and unaccountable federal agencies. The strategy won’t work, unfortunately.
Even if both bodies of Congress pass the resolution, Joe Biden will just veto it. He is the one, after all, who is opting to destroy the American economy and the middle class in the name of protecting the weather.
“Biden’s latest effort to push electric vehicles is completely out of line and will eliminate consumer choice, grow our reliance on foreign adversaries, directly impact transportation for Idahoans, and have lasting impacts on the U.S. supply chain,” says Rep. Fulcher.
It’s much worse than that. As far as ideas go, electric trucks arean even bigger boondoggle than electric cars, electric SUVs, and electric pickups.
For starters, it takes an astonishing amount of electricity just to recharge an electric vehicle. Powering an EV big rig requires seven times as much electricity as the average American home uses in a single day. Charging stations that could recharge multiple big rigs at once would require more electricity than it takes to power a small city. It also takes several hours to recharge one.
America’s power grid isn’t even vaguely ready for that much of an added strain, especially with the politicians pushing stupid and inefficient energy sources like windmills and solar panels. Unless we immediately start building nuclear power plants across the country right now, it will be impossible to convert the nation’s fleet of big rigs to electric by 2030.
EV semi-trucks are also wildly expensive. A new diesel truck can cost as little as $70,000. Rep. Fulcher says a new EV truck can cost twice as much, but that’s being extremely generous. If you subtract the government subsidies that Tesla and other companies are receiving to build EV semi-trucks right now, the total cost is between $400,000 and $500,000 apiece. That will immediately price small and independent truckers out of the market and put them out of business—thus burdening the supply chains even more.
Capacity is another nightmare. Electric trucks weigh a lot more than diesel trucks, so they cannot haul as much freight. The head of the trade association for California drayage trucks says companies will need to double the number of trucks they operate to move as much freight every day.
One last point: Biden’s Green New Deal nonsense will absolutely drive transportation costs up even further. This ensures that the inflation currently being caused by sky-high diesel prices will not be going away anytime soon.
As mentioned, there’s no possible way that Joe Biden will sign the resolution to overturn the EPA’s new electric semi-truck rule. The plan in Congress, therefore, might be to pass the resolution now and have it ready to send to President Trump’s desk next year when he returns to the White House.
