Under a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, some factories making batteries for electric vehicles will each receive more than a billion dollars per year from the U.S. government, with no requirement to pay good wages to production workers. Thanks to the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit, also called 45X for its section in the Internal Revenue Code, battery companies will receive tax credits that they can use, sell, or cash out. The 45X program alone will cost taxpayers over $200 billion in the next decade, far more than the $31 billion estimated by Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. On top ...
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This week the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW) and The Metals Company (TMC) announced that they have entered into a labor neutrality agreement to bolster the critical mineral supply chain and to lay the groundwork for sustainable production of electric car batteries while creating a path to more good union jobs in the United States. TMC will process and eventually recycle key battery metals responsibly collected from polymetallic nodules that lay unattached on the seafloor in the Eastern Pacific off the coast of North America. Battery metals, many of which are included on ...
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