I recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual SAE Government and Industry Meeting and visit with various members of Michigan’s federal delegation on Capitol Hill. While visiting only a week after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term, a sense of “what’s next?” surrounded the conversations during the trip.
A conference highlight was a presentation of polling data from famed Republican Political Consultant Mike Murphy, a Detroit native who now runs the EV Politics Project, a bipartisan initiative to better understand and address the partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans as it relates to EV adoption in the U.S. You can read more about the findings from the presentation here.
Connecting With Michigan’s Federal Delegation
During my trip, I met with staffers from Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) office and discussed the Senator’s push last year (as then–Rep. Slotkin) to establish a national security review of connected vehicle technologies from China, Russia, and other countries of concern, as well as for other technologies that can gather, process, and transmit data on Americans back to potentially adversarial nations. The timing of any reintroduction of this legislation is yet to be determined.
I also met with Sen. Gary Peters’s (D-MI) office, who, despite recently announcing his retirement from the Senate in two years, expressed his ongoing commitment to the automotive industry and its importance to Michigan.
On the House side, I met with Reps. Haley Stevens’s (D-MI 11) and John Moolenaar’s (R-MI 2) offices and discussed the importance of domestic manufacturing, immigration reform, federal R&D expensing, deductibility standards, investments in the domestic supply chain, and critical minerals and permitting reform. Moolenaar’s recently introduced bipartisan legislation to revoke China’s permanent normal trade status was an important topic among conversations with the representative, who is the new Chair of the China Select Committee.
Advocating for the Industry
During all of my conversations, I stressed the importance of preserving the 45X (as well as other key provisions) of the Inflation Reduction Act that established advanced manufacturing tax credits necessary for various suppliers building new clean energy and EV-related parts. All the offices I spoke with were optimistic that this provision could spare any repeal of the overall Inflation Reduction Act and that strengthening “foreign entity of concern” language could ensure its survival.
I look forward to continuing to build strong relationships among Michigan’s federal delegation to ensure the industry remains at the forefront of their considerations as momentously important policy decisions are deliberated on in 2025.