‘I don’t know’: Biden noncommittal on including Canadian vehicles in EV tax credit

Biden also suggested it’s too early to assume that the proposal, which is part of the $1.75-trillion climate change and social spending package currently awaiting a vote in the House of Representatives, will emerge unscathed.

His signature “Build Back Better” bill is widely expected to pass in the House, but it will get a rougher ride in the evenly divided Senate, where one moderate Democrat — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — has already said he doesn’t like the fact that the tax credit uses taxpayer money to pick winners and losers.

“We haven’t even passed it yet in the House,” Biden said. “There’s a lot of complicating factors.”

Later Thursday, Trudeau, Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador were scheduled to gather for a trilateral summit — their first since 2016.

Canada and Mexico both are worried that the tax credit proposal, which if implemented as it stands would be worth up to $12,500 to a new car buyer, is too heavily geared towards U.S.-made vehicles.

Biden, who has made it clear he shares some of his predecessor’s protectionist instincts, also designed the credit to favour vehicles made with U.S. union labour.

But in his opening remarks, he described the U.S. relationship with Canada as “one of the easiest” and “one of the best” because of the shared values between the two countries.

A number of issues the three leaders will discuss have already been agreed upon.

For instance, Canada and Mexico have already agreed to redistribute millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses they received from the United States to other Western Hemisphere countries.

Senior U.S. government officials outlined the measure in advance of Thursday’s meeting, speaking on the condition of anonymity as authorized briefers.

An initiative Trudeau announced with former U.S. president Barack Obama in Ottawa in 2016 is being revived by Biden — a North American working group on violence against Indigenous women and girls.

The three leaders will also look at strengthening trilateral co-operation on the Western Hemisphere’s unprecedented migration crisis that has seen millions of asylum seekers from Central America crashing Mexico’s borders while Venezuela’s economic and political crisis is expected to produce six million refugees by the end of the year.

Trudeau and several cabinet ministers in tow, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Trade Minister Mary Ng and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, met one-on-one Thursday morning with López Obrador at D.C.’s Mexican Cultural Institute.

López Obrador, who was meeting Trudeau in person for the first time, described the two countries as “sister nations” in advance of their trilateral meeting with Biden.

“We are both countries that belong in North America,” the Mexican president said. “We are countries that collaborate and co-operate.”

Trudeau acknowledged that the two countries have “lots of great things to talk about, lots of things that we agree and align on.”

One of those is the EV tax credit, which Canadian and Mexican officials alike say is a violation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement forged as a NAFTA update in 2018.

Freeland described the proposal Wednesday as potentially “the dominant issue” in the Canada-U.S. relationship if the two countries can’t come together on an agreement. In the same breath, however, she said she believes there’s plenty of room to negotiate a “win-win” for both sides.

The overarching theme of the summit is joining forces to rebuild after the COVID-19 pandemic and make the North American continent more resilient and self-sustaining against global supply chain bottlenecks.

The plan for Canada and Mexico to share their American-supplied excess vaccines is part of that economic rebuilding plan. When the U.S. loaned Canada and Mexico millions of vaccines, there was an agreement that they “would pay those forward” to regional partners, said one official.

The exact details of the distribution are to be worked out later by public health experts, said the officials.

The U.S. officials said that there can be no economic competitiveness without equity and justice, so Biden is keen to forge a continental partnership on racial equity and inclusion.

Biden also wants to engage with Canada and Mexico on dealing with the root causes of the mass migration of asylum seekers south of the Mexican border.

Biden wants “to lock arms with Canada and Mexico” on a joint approach to tackle the economic inequities that are forcing people in the Western Hemisphere to flee their countries in record numbers, officials said.

Given the labour shortages in North America, new approaches need to be found to match economic migrants with potential employment opportunities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, officials said.

As widely expected, the three leaders will be focused on the supply chain snarls that are hampering the post-pandemic economic recovery.

Canada is expected to be added to the U.S.-Mexico supply chain working group to make it a North America-wide effort aimed at minimizing future disruptions for the continent. The new working group will look at defining essential industries, including critical minerals, officials said.

Trudeau used his first day in Washington on Wednesday to talk up Canada’s competitive advantage on critical minerals, which are used in batteries for computers, cellphones, electric vehicles and other essential items.

Trudeau told a think-tank audience that his government began talking with the U.S. two or three years ago about Canada’s abundant supply of critical minerals.

China is the world’s leading supplier of those minerals, but pandemic-induced bottlenecks have created major shortages.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2021.

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

‘I don’t know’: Biden noncommittal on including Canadian vehicles in EV tax credit

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