Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer offered a contrasting view of manufacturing in Detroit Thursday, two days after President Donald Trump defended his tariff strategy in the Motor City.
Whitmer, a term-limited Democrat who is in her last year as governor, said in a speech at the Detroit Auto Show that the administration’s tariff strategy has hurt American auto manufacturing and is benefiting Chinese competitors. It’s a message she has repeated over the past year as economic uncertainty has rippled across the automobile sector.
“This will only get worse without a serious shift in national policy,” Whitmer said.
Her remarks followed Trump’s speech defending his economic policy Tuesday in Detroit, a major hub of automobile manufacturing. He also toured the factory floor of a Ford plant in Dearborn.
“All U.S. automakers are doing great,” Trump said.
Whitmer offered a differing picture of the impact, saying that American manufacturing has contracted for months leading to job loss and production cuts. She has remained firmly opposed to Trump’s tariff strategy since last year, especially as her state partners closely with Canadian business. Automobile parts often cross the U.S.-Canadian border several times in the assembly process.
“America stands more alone than she has in decades,” Whitmer said. “And perhaps no industry has seen more change and been more impacted than our auto industry.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Whitmer’s speech.
Whitmer has kept a more cordial relationship with Trump in his second term compared to his first. The relationship included a few White House visits last year. Long considered a possible Democratic candidate for president, Whitmer’s strategy is notably different than other potential 2028 names who have take more public, combative approaches to Trump, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
In her address, her first of the year, Whitmer said every time she has met with Trump this past year, she has told him that hurting the U.S.-Canadian relationship only helps Chinese competition.
Trump changed his tune when it comes to automobiles in the last year. He originally announced a 25% tariff on automobiles and parts only to later relax the policy as domestic manufactures sought relief from the threat of rising production costs.
On his tour in the Detroit area, Trump suggested the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a major trade agreement he negotiated in his first term, was irrelevant, although he provided few other details The UMCA is up for review this year.
Whitmer defended the trade agreement in her speech.
“When we fight our neighbors, however, China wins,” she said.
The Los Angeles Auto Show is Nov. 21-30 at the LA Convention Center.
More than 50 vehicles will be available to test drive or ride, including two outdoor test drive options.
Major debuts are planned for the 10-day event, offering an opportunity to see the latest from global automakers.
The Auto Show is open on Thanksgiving Day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Los Angeles welcomes the world’s automakers when the LA Auto Show begins its nearly 10-day run Friday at the Convention Center.
Test drives, new brands and models, special guests, events and more will be part of the automotive showcase in a city that’s been a significant thread in the fabric of car culture since the first automobiles rolled off the production line.
Founded in 1907, the show has become a late-November draw for car shoppers and anyone interested in Southern California car culture.
Several major debuts are planned. Customs, exotics, high-end luxury vehicles and more will be on display in the Showcase Hall. The Hall of Sparq will feature automotive icons and vehicles from films and video games.
Here’s what to know about the 2025 edition of the LA Auto Show.
When is the 2025 LA Auto Show?
The auto show is Nov. 21-30 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Here are the show hours.
Friday, Nov. 21 and Thursday, Nov. 22: 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
VIP Priority Entry + Ticket on Saturdays and Sundays: Adult $45, Senior $22, Child $22
Wednesday/Thursday Thanksgiving Family Four-Packs: $63
Getting around at the LA Auto Show
So many displays, 1 million square feet of floor space, halls packed with exhibits. It can be overwhelming. The Auto Show has a floor guide to help you find the brands that interest you
Test drives at the LA Auto Show
There are two opportunities to test drive cars on the streets near the Convention Center. More than 50 vehicles will be available to drive or ride
Clean Power Alliance EV and Hybrid Test Track
Cadillac: Escalade IQ, LYRIQ, OPTIQ and VISTIQ.
Chevrolet: Blazer EV, Bolt EV 10th anniversary, Equinox EV and Silverado EV.
Faraday Future: FF 91 2.0 Futurist Alliance, FX Super One
Lucid: Air and Gravity Touring.
Nissan: First-ever consumer test drive opportunity with all-new Leaf.
Volkswagen: Atlas, ID Buzz and Tiguan.
Volvo: Celebrating its 70th anniversary in the U.S., the legendary Swedish brand will celebrate with test drivers of its XC90, XC60 and EX30.
Gilbert Lindsay Plaza Street Drives
Alfa Romeo: Giulia and Tonale PHEV.
Chrysler: Pacifica PHEV.
Dodge: Durango SRT and Hornet.
Fiat: 500e
Jeep: Gladiator, Grand Cherokee L, Wrangler and Wrangler 4xe.
Kia: EV9 GT Line, EV6 GT Line and EV6 GT.
RAM: RAM 1500 and RAM 2500
Rivian: R1-S and R1-T.
Subaru: Ascent Onyx Touring, Crosstrek Sport, Forester Touring, Forester Sport Hybrid, Impreza RS, Outback, Solterra Touring and WRX tS.
Toyota: bZ, Grand Highlander, RAV4 Hybrid, Prius PHEV and Tacoma TRD Pro
Indoor test rides also will be available.
How to get to the LA Auto Show
Public transit is one option. Pico Station is the closest Metro train station, just a short walk to the Convention Center. More details about using Metro, and DASH and Metrolink options are available here.
Parking is available at the Convention Center garages next to the main halls on a first-come, first-park basis. Expect to pay about $25 to $35.
Car loans have gone from the safest consumer credit products to among the riskiest over the last 15 years as delinquencies rose more than 50%, driven by soaring car prices and rising interest rates, a new study shows.
Consumers across all income categories are struggling to make monthly car payments, according to VantageScore, a credit-scoring company.
Auto loans were once a safe haven, with drivers prioritizing payments on their transportation above other debts. But delinquencies on car loans, defined as 60 days or more past due, jumped 51.5% from the first quarter of 2010 through the first quarter of 2025. The opposite is true for credit cards, personal loans and most other forms of consumer credit.
The study found that 1.6% of total auto loans were 60 days or more past due as of July 2025, while credit card and first mortgage loan delinquencies are less than 1%. US consumers purchased about 16 million new cars last year and the majority were financed. There are close to 300 million cars on the road in America.
VantageScore found that, in relative terms, monthly car payments are increasing faster than mortgage payments.
“We’re seeing the cost of cars and the cost related to car ownership increase enormously,” Rikard Bandebo, VantageScore’s chief economist, said in an interview. “In the past five years, it has increased even faster.”
Since 2019, new car prices have risen more than 25% and now top $50,000 on average, according to researcher Cox Automotive. The average monthly payment on a new car was $767 in the third quarter, and one in five borrowers pay more than $1,000 a month, according to automotive researcher Edmunds.com. Interest rates on new car loans now top 9%, exacerbating an automotive affordability crisis.
“That’s a double whammy,” Bandebo said. “You’ve been hit by the increased cost of the car and then the financing cost of the car.”
No income group is immune. Prime and near-prime borrowers, who typically have good credit scores, are actually missing car payments at a faster rate than subprime consumers since lenders tightened financing criteria for the lowest-rung borrowers three years ago, the study found.
“The higher income you have, you tend to at least feel that you can own a more expensive car,” Bandebo said.
The average auto loan balance has grown 57% since 2010, outpacing all other credit products, VantageScore found.
To get a more affordable monthly payment, car buyers are stretching the length of loans to seven years or more. That is leaving an increasing number of consumers “upside-down” on their loans, meaning they owe more than the car is worth.
The trend of missing car payments is unlikely to reverse with American consumers continuing to buy more expensive trucks and sport-utility vehicles. Automakers are also offering fewer affordable models.
“Consumers now are in a more precarious position than they’ve been since the last recession,” Bandebo said. “We’ve seen this growing trend over the last several years of more and more consumers struggling to make ends meet, and it’s looking like that trend is going to continue into next year.”
Ford CEO Jim Farley gathered a host of experts this week to discuss what he calls “the essential economy,” the blue-collar backbone that he sees mired in crisis. AT&T CEO John Stankey and FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam talked about how AI is impacting manufacturing and how they’re hustling to stay ahead of the curve; Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued a sober warning about how China could “dominate” if we’re not careful with our auto industry; and even JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon appeared via video to urge America not to become a “nation of compliance and box-checking.”
But during the keynote discussion with Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Mike Rowe of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, Farley revealed how his own family is being impacted. “My son worked as a mechanic this summer,” Farley said while moderating.
Then, Farley added, his son said something that stunned both of his parents: “Dad, I really like this work. I don’t know why I need to go to college.” Farley said he and his wife looked at each other and wondered, “Should we be debating this?” It’s something that’s happening in a lot of American households, he noted. “It should be a debate.”
Math isn’t mathing
Rowe, a longtime vocational advocate, seized on data showing that while two skilled tradespeople enter the workforce, five retire each year. The imbalance, he explained, is “the math that’s catching up to us” as the baby boomer generation ages and birth rates fall.
Rowe cited data from his own life. His own degree cost $12,200 in 1984, he said, whereas today it would cost something like $97,000.
“Nothing in the history of Western civilization has gotten more expensive, more quickly,” Rowe said. “Not energy, not food, not real estate, not even health care, [nothing has been inflated more] than the cost of a four-year degree.”
The Associated Press reported that, yes, many colleges were charging roughly $95,000 per year as of April 2024, but the financial aid system lowers that in practice. Still, it’s by and large true that inflation for college tuition, health care, and housing costs has far outpaced that for, say, televisions, toys, and software, showing Rowe is making a solid point. With costs this high, the value proposition of college is under serious scrutiny.
Fortune has reported on several Gen Z entrepreneurs who dove straight into the trades instead of going to college. One, at 23, was already his own boss and making more than $100,000 per year, and the other, 19, was working his way up to it. Both of them had side hustles as social-media influencers, adding another revenue stream. Marlo Loria, director of career and technical education and innovative partnerships at Mesa Public Schools in Arizona, said she often gives options to students that are different from a traditional four-year degree.
“Our youth want to know why. Why do I need to go to college? Why do I want to get in debt? Why do I want to do these things?” She said that “because I told you so” doesn’t cut it anymore.
A path back to the American Dream?
Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer echoed this sentiment, saying government, educators, and industry must partner to make the skilled trades attractive to young Americans.
“For far too long, we haven’t brought the right people to the table,” she said, emphasizing the need for collaboration so that “businesses are heard, and the American workforce is valued.”
Chavez-DeRemer argued that if the average American wants to have a good-paying job and a mortgage, they should strongly consider the trades.
She questioned: “Do you know that most of our 35- and 40-year-olds are not going to be able to buy a home anywhere near the future?”
This is the time in people’s lives when they’re trying to grow their families, and the current U.S. economy does not set them up to do that, she said. She noted that trade school graduates often emerge earning more than $100,000 per year. The average tradesman will come out making about $11,000 more than a college graduate will, she said.
The essential obstacle, said Rowe, is not just economics but stigma.
“Stigmas and stereotypes and myths and misperceptions have conspired to keep a whole generation of kids from giving trades an honest look,” he said. Until the culture changes and people recognize the dignity and opportunity of these jobs, attempts to fill workforce gaps will be “quixotic or Sisyphean.”
The AI question
Asked about the fear AI and robotics might replace human workers, both panelists were optimistic. Chavez-DeRemer compared the transition to prior industrial and tech revolutions, stating: “We adapt. We are an adaptable people.” She emphasized AI should be seen as a tool that empowers, not replaces, the essential workforce.
“Businesses are retraining their employees,” she said. “The R&D is showing us that [they’re] going to create new types of jobs.”
Rowe added, “AI is coming for the coders, not yet for the welders,” reflecting the resiliency and growing demand in the trades. He argued every “frontline” vocation, from welding to pipe-fitting, is now seeing a boom, and AI won’t touch that. Rowe also cited remarks covered by Fortune from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about the need for blue-collar workers to power the data-center infrastructure underlying the AI boom. He also mentioned BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s comments that his $12 trillion–plus portfolio was dependent on having enough electricians, a sector short of hundreds of thousands of workers.
“The biggest CEOs in our country [are ringing] the metaphorical alarm bell,” Rowe said, calling it a “macro problem” the essential economy can solve.
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Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris face off in the ABC presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024.
Getty Images
With the U.S. election less than a month away, the country and its corporations are staring down two drastically different options.
For airlines, banks, electric vehicle makers, health-care companies, media firms, restaurants and tech giants, the outcome of the presidential contest could result in stark differences in the rules they’ll face, the mergers they’ll be allowed to pursue, and the taxes they’ll pay.
During his last time in power, former President Donald Trump slashed the corporate tax rate, imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, and sought to cut regulation and red tape and discourage immigration, ideas he’s expected to push again if he wins a second term.
In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris has endorsed hiking the tax rate on corporations to 28% from the 21% rate enacted under Trump, a move that would require congressional approval. Most business executives expect Harris to broadly continue President Joe Biden‘s policies, including his war on so-called junk fees across industries.
Personnel is policy, as the saying goes, so the ramifications of the presidential race won’t become clear until the winner begins appointments for as many as a dozen key bodies, including the Treasury, Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
CNBC examined the stakes of the 2024 presidential election for some of corporate America’s biggest sectors. Here’s what a Harris or Trump administration could mean for business:
The result of the presidential election could affect everything from what airlines owe consumers for flight disruptions to how much it costs to build an aircraft in the United States.
The Biden Department of Transportation, led by Secretary Pete Buttigieg, has taken a hard line on filling what it considers to be holes in air traveler protections. It has established or proposed new rules on issues including refunds for cancellations, family seating and service fee disclosures, a measure airlines have challenged in court.
“Who’s in that DOT seat matters,” said Jonathan Kletzel, who heads the travel, transportation and logistics practice at PwC.
The current Democratic administration has also fought industry consolidation, winning two antitrust lawsuits that blocked a partnership between American Airlines and JetBlue Airways in the Northeast and JetBlue’s now-scuttled plan to buy budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
The previous Trump administration didn’t pursue those types of consumer protections. Industry members say that under Trump, they would expect a more favorable environment for mergers, though four airlines already control more than three-quarters of the U.S. market.
On the aerospace side, Boeing and the hundreds of suppliers that support it are seeking stability more than anything else.
Trump has said on the campaign trail that he supports additional tariffs of 10% or 20% and higher duties on goods from China. That could drive up the cost of producing aircraft and other components for aerospace companies, just as a labor and skills shortage after the pandemic drives up expenses.
Tariffs could also challenge the industry, if they spark retaliatory taxes or trade barriers to China and other countries, which are major buyers of aircraft from Boeing, a top U.S. exporter.
Big banks such as JPMorgan Chase faced an onslaught of new rules this year as Biden appointees pursued the most significant slate of regulations since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Those efforts threaten tens of billions of dollars in industry revenue by slashing fees that banks impose on credit cards and overdrafts and radically revising the capital and risk framework they operate in. The fate of all of those measures is at risk if Trump is elected.
Trump is expected to nominate appointees for key financial regulators, including the CFPB, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that could result in a weakening or killing off completely of the myriad rules in play.
“The Biden administration’s regulatory agenda across sectors has been very ambitious, especially in finance, and large swaths of it stand to be rolled back by Trump appointees if he wins,” said Tobin Marcus, head of U.S. policy at Wolfe Research.
Bank CEOs and consultants say it would be a relief if aspects of the Biden era — an aggressive CFPB, regulators who discouraged most mergers and elongated times for deal approvals — were dialed back.
“It certainly helps if the president is Republican, and the odds tilt more favorably for the industry if it’s a Republican sweep” in Congress, said the CEO of a bank with nearly $100 billion in assets who declined to be identified speaking about regulators.
Still, some observers point out that Trump 2.0 might not be as friendly to the industry as his first time in office.
Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, has often criticized Wall Street banks, and Trump last month began pushing an idea to cap credit card interest rates at 10%, a move that if enacted would have seismic implications for the industry.
Bankers also say that Harris won’t necessarily cater to traditional Democratic Party ideas that have made life tougher for banks. Unless Democrats seize both chambers of Congress as well as the presidency, it may be difficult to get agency heads approved if they’re considered partisan picks, experts note.
“I would not write off the vice president as someone who’s automatically going to go more progressive,” said Lindsey Johnson, head of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group for big U.S. retail banks.
Electric vehicles have become a polarizing issue between Democrats and Republicans, especially in swing states such as Michigan that rely on the auto industry. There could be major changes in regulations and incentives for EVs if Trump regains power, a fact that’s placed the industry in a temporary limbo.
“Depending on the election in the U.S., we may have mandates; we may not,” Volkswagen Group of America CEO Pablo Di Si said Sept. 24 during an Automotive News conference. “Am I going to make any decisions on future investments right now? Obviously not. We’re waiting to see.”
Republicans, led by Trump, have largely condemned EVs, claiming they are being forced upon consumers and that they will ruin the U.S. automotive industry. Trump has vowed to roll back or eliminate many vehicle emissions standards under the Environmental Protection Agency and incentives to promote production and adoption of the vehicles.
If elected, he’s also expected to renew a battle with California and other states who set their own vehicle emissions standards.
“In a Republican win … We see higher variance and more potential for change,” UBS analyst Joseph Spak said in a Sept. 18 investor note.
In contrast, Democrats, including Harris, have historically supported EVs and incentives such as those under the Biden administration’s signature Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris hasn’t been as vocal a supporter of EVs lately amid slower-than-expected consumer adoption of the vehicles and consumer pushback. She has said she does not support an EV mandate such as the Zero-Emission Vehicles Act of 2019, which she cosponsored during her time as a senator, that would have required automakers to sell only electrified vehicles by 2040. Still, auto industry executives and officials expect a Harris presidency would be largely a continuation, though not a copy, of the past four years of Biden’s EV policy.
They expect some potential leniency on federal fuel economy regulations but minimal changes to the billions of dollars in incentives under the IRA.
Both Harris and Trump have called for sweeping changes to the costly, complicated and entrenched U.S. health-care system of doctors, insurers, drug manufacturers and middlemen, which costs the nation more than $4 trillion a year.
Despite spending more on health care than any other wealthy country, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases and the highest maternal and infant death rates, according to the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.
Meanwhile, roughly half of American adults say it is difficult to afford health-care costs, which can drive some into debt or lead them to put off necessary care, according to a May poll conducted by health policy research organization KFF.
Both Harris and Trump have taken aim at the pharmaceutical industry and proposed efforts to lower prescription drug prices in the U.S., which are nearly three times higher than those seen in other countries.
But many of Trump’s efforts to lower costs have been temporary or not immediately effective, health policy experts said. Meanwhile, Harris, if elected, can build on existing efforts of the Biden administration to deliver savings to more patients, they said.
Harris specifically plans to expand certain provisions of the IRA, part of which aims to lower health-care costs for seniors enrolled in Medicare. Harris cast the tie-breaking Senate vote to pass the law in 2022.
Her campaign says she plans to extend two provisions to all Americans, not just seniors: a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug spending and a $35 limit on monthly insulin costs.
Harris also intends to accelerate and expand a provision allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices with manufacturers for the first time. Drugmakers fiercely oppose those price talks, with some challenging the effort’s constitutionality in court.
Trump hasn’t publicly indicated what he intends to do about IRA provisions.
Some of Trump’s prior efforts to lower drug prices “didn’t really come into fruition” during his presidency, according to Dr. Mariana Socal, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For example, he planned to use executive action to have Medicare pay no more than the lowest price that select other developed countries pay for drugs, a proposal that was blocked by court action and later rescinded.
Trump also led multiple efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults. In a campaign video in April, Trump said he was not running on terminating the ACA and would rather make it “much, much better and far less money,” though he has provided no specific plans.
He reiterated his belief that the ACA was “lousy health care” during his Sept. 10 debate with Harris. But when asked he did not offer a replacement proposal, saying only that he has “concepts of a plan.”
Top of mind for media executives is mergers and the path, or lack thereof, to push them through.
The media industry’s state of turmoil — shrinking audiences for traditional pay TV, the slowdown in advertising, and the rise of streaming and challenges in making it profitable — means its companies are often mentioned in discussions of acquisitions and consolidation.
While a merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is set to move forward, with plans to close in the first half of 2025, many in media have said the Biden administration has broadly chilled deal-making.
“We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to do even better,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in July at Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley conference.
Media mogul John Malone recently told MoffettNathanson analysts that some deals are a nonstarter with this current Justice Department, including mergers between companies in the telecommunications and cable broadband space.
Still, it’s unclear how the regulatory environment could or would change depending on which party is in office. Disney was allowed to acquire Fox Corp.’s assets when Trump was in office, but his administration sued to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner. Meanwhile, under Biden’s presidency, a federal judge blocked the sale of Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, but Amazon’s acquisition of MGM was approved.
“My sense is, regardless of the election outcome, we are likely to remain in a similar tighter regulatory environment when looking at media industry dealmaking,” said Marc DeBevoise, CEO and board director of Brightcove, a streaming technology company.
When major media, and even tech, assets change hands, it could also mean increased scrutiny on those in control and whether it creates bias on the platforms.
“Overall, the government and FCC have always been most concerned with having a diversity of voices,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investment. “But then [Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter] happened, and it’s clearly showing you can skew a platform to not just what the business needs, but to maybe your personal approach and whims,” he said.
Since Musk acquired the social media platform in 2022, changing its name to X, he has implemented sweeping changes including cutting staff and giving “amnesty” to previously suspended accounts, including Trump’s, which had been suspended following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Musk has also faced widespread criticism from civil rights groups for the amplification of bigotry on the platform.
Musk has publicly endorsed Trump, and was recently on the campaign trail with the former president. “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA, I’m Dark MAGA,” Musk said at a recent event. The billionaire has raised funds for Republican causes, and Trump has suggested Musk could eventually play a role in his administration if the Republican candidate were to be reelected.
During his first term, Trump took a particularly hard stance against journalists, and pursued investigations into leaks from his administration to news organizations. Under Biden, the White House has been notably more amenable to journalists.
Also top of mind for media executives — and government officials — is TikTok.
Lawmakers have argued that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could be a national security risk.
Earlier this year, Biden signed legislation that gives Chinese parent ByteDance until January to find a new owner for the platform or face a U.S. ban. TikTok has said the bill, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which passed with bipartisan support, violates the First Amendment. The platform has sued the government to stop a potential ban.
While Trump was in office, he attempted to ban TikTok through an executive order, but the effort failed. However, he has more recently switched to supporting the platform, arguing that without it there’s less competition against Meta’s Facebook and other social media.
Both Trump and Harris have endorsed plans to end taxes on restaurant workers’ tips, although how they would do so is likely to differ.
The food service and restaurant industry is the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer, with 15.5 million jobs, according to the National Restaurant Association. Roughly 2.2 million of those employees are tipped servers and bartenders, who could end up with more money in their pockets if their tips are no longer taxed.
Trump’s campaign hasn’t given much detail on how his administration would eliminate taxes on tips, but tax experts have warned that it could turn into a loophole for high earners. Claims from the Trump campaign that the Republican candidate is pro-labor have clashed with his record of appointing leaders to the National Labor Relations Board who have rolled back worker protections.
Meanwhile, Harris has said she’d only exempt workers who make $75,000 or less from paying income tax on their tips, but the money would still be subject to taxes toward Social Security and Medicare, the Washington Post previously reported.
In keeping with the campaign’s more labor-friendly approach, Harris is also pledging to eliminate the tip credit: In 37 states, employers only have to pay tipped workers the minimum wage as long as that hourly wage and tips add up to the area’s pay floor. Since 1991, the federal pay floor for tipped wages has been stuck at $2.13.
“In the short term, if [restaurants] have to pay higher wages to their waiters, they’re going to have to raise menu prices, which is going to lower demand,” said Michael Lynn, a tipping expert and Cornell University professor.
Whichever candidate comes out ahead in November will have to grapple with the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence sector.
Generative AI is the biggest story in tech since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. It presents a conundrum for regulators, because it allows consumers to easily create text and images from simple queries, creating privacy and safety concerns.
Harris has said she and Biden “reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect the public or advance innovation.” Last year, the White House issued an executive order that led to the formation of the Commerce Department’s U.S. AI Safety Institute, which is evaluating AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
Trump has committed to repealing the executive order.
A second Trump administration might also attempt to challenge a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that requires companies to disclose cybersecurity incidents. The White House said in January that more transparency “will incentivize corporate executives to invest in cybersecurity and cyber risk management.”
Trump’s running mate, Vance, co-sponsored a bill designed to end the rule. Andrew Garbarino, the House Republican who introduced an identical bill, has said the SEC rule increases cybersecurity risk and overlaps with existing law on incident reporting.
Also at stake in the election is the fate of dealmaking for tech investors and executives.
With Lina Khan helming the FTC, the top tech companies have been largely thwarted from making big acquisitions, though the Justice Department and European regulators have also created hurdles.
Tech transaction volume peaked at $1.5 trillion in 2021, then plummeted to $544 billion last year and $465 billion in 2024 as of September, according to Dealogic.
Many in the tech industry are critical of Khan and want her to be replaced should Harris win in November. Meanwhile, Vance, who worked in venture capital before entering politics, said as recently as February — before he was chosen as Trump’s running mate — that Khan was “doing a pretty good job.”
Khan, whom Biden nominated in 2021, has challenged Amazon and Meta on antitrust grounds and has said the FTC will investigate AI investments at Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024.
David Swanson | Reuters
With Tesla’s hotly anticipated robotaxi event hours away, investors will soon get a glance at what CEO Elon Musk has called the CyberCab.
After a decade of unfulfilled promises to deliver autonomous vehicles, capable of traveling reasonable distances safely without a human at the wheel, there’s a hefty dose of skepticism about what Tesla can do technologically, and when its robotaxi might actually hit the market.
The robotaxi day, or “We, Robot,” event is scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. Pacific time at a Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California and will be livestreamed via X.
Garrett Nelson, an analyst at CFRA, cautioned in a preview on Oct. 4, that conditions at a closed course on a movie studio lot could make a Tesla robotaxi look more advanced than it would be in normal traffic and on public roads. CFRA has a hold rating on the stock.
Tesla shares dipped about 1% on Thursday to $238.77. They’re now down almost 4% for the year and more than 40% below their record reached in 2021.
The event comes a week after Tesla reported third-quarter deliveries of 462,890, lifting the number to 1.35 million for the year so far. For all of last year, Tesla reported deliveries of 1.81 million.
Bullish analysts at firms including Wedbush, ARK and RBC Capital Markets expressed optimism in their reports about the company’s ability to keep growing sales long-term, while delivering higher-tech products, including a long-delayed autonomous vehicle, humanoid robotics and other AI-driven products and services.
Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Wednesday, that he’ll be at the event and expects to test the robotaxi.
Munster, a long-time Tesla bull, said he thinks the company will roll out robotaxis in some cities by the end of 2025. He’s also expecting Tesla to announce plans to produce an affordable EV, possibly just a stripped down version of its Model 3, and an electric van.
He said that while he expects the stock to be down after the event, it could “make new highs” over the next two years as deliveries start to accelerate.
Tesla was once seen as a pioneer in autonomous vehicle development, but has never managed to deliver or demonstrate robotaxi technology. The company is now considered a laggard.
Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S., and a number of Chinese firms, are all operating commercial robotaxi services today.
Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a report on Wednesday that if Tesla can launch a “level 4” robotaxi, meaning it can operate without a driver at the wheel, using its current “suite of hardware and software,” it would result in a cost-per-mile advantage relative to peers.
In addition to missed deadlines, Tesla has had safety issues with the its driver assistance systems, which are currently marketed as the standard Autopilot and premium Full Self-Driving (Supervised) options.
Missy Cummings, a professor at George Mason University and director of the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center, said Tesla leaders should be able to say how they’re solving a problem known as “phantom braking,” which refers to instances when vehicles equipped with ADAS apply their brakes unexpectedly, even while driving at highway speeds, with no visible obstacles around them.
Tesla’s phantom braking problems are the subject of an ongoing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Cummings, who previously served as a senior safety advisor to the regulator, told CNBC, “If they can’t solve phantom braking for a level 2 car, they can’t solve it for level 4 or 5 vehicle.” Level 2 vehicles include driver assistance systems.
According to data tracked by NHTSA starting in 2021, there have been 1,399 crashes in which Tesla driver assistance systems were engaged within 30 seconds of the crash, and 31 of these collisions resulted in reported fatalities.
Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Guidehouse Insights, said Musk or other Tesla executives should be able to say exactly how they plan for their vehicles to operate in different weather, such as fog, rain, snow, and lighting, or in dark tunnels.
He also wants Tesla executives to say whether they will accept full liability for the operation of these vehicles, which he calls “table stakes for a true robotaxi without human controls.”
Finally, Abuelsamid wants to know if Tesla plans to own and operate its robotaxis or lease or sell them to consumers and fleet operators.
“Many companies have made progress on the automated driving technology side,” Abuelsamid said. “But they’ve faltered when it came to figuring out a business model that could be profitable. Tesla has a lot of challenges to overcome and I want to know how all the pieces fall into place.”
Carlos Tavares, chief executive officer of Stellantis NV, speaks to the media at the Stellantis auto manufacturing plant in Sochaux, France, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
DETROIT — Stellantis is suing the United Auto Workers, escalating a monthslong battle between the transatlantic automaker and American union, CNBC has learned.
In an internal message Friday to employees that was confirmed to be authentic, the company said it is suing the UAW as well as a local chapter in California that participated in a strike authorization request vote at Stellantis’ Los Angeles Parts Distribution Center.
“This lawsuit would hold both the International and the local union liable for the revenue loss and other damages resulting from lost production due to an unlawful strike,” Tobin Williams, Stellantis senior vice president of North America human resources, said in the message.
The lawsuit is intended to “prevent and/or remedy a breach of contract” by the UAW, according to a copy of the complaint that was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.
A supermajority of UAW members at Stellantis’ Los Angeles Parts Distribution Center voted to request strike authorization from the International Executive Board if the company and union can’t reconcile, the union said Friday morning.
The UAW did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon regarding the lawsuit.
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain speaks to the attendees during a campaign rally for U.S. Vice President and Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in Romulus, Michigan, U.S., August 7, 2024.
Rebecca Cook | Reuters
The dispute between the two sides centers on the union alleging Stellantis has not kept contractual obligations as part of a deal the two sides reached late last year. It comes after Stellantis has made several cuts to plant production, conducted worker layoffs and delayed potential investments outlined as part of the 2023 contract.
The automaker has argued, including in the Friday letter to employees, that there’s language in the contract that gives it leniency to change plans based on market conditions, plant performance and other factors.
UAW President Shawn Fain has routinely said the union will strike if needed, however Stellantis has argued that would be unlawful under the contract.
This is breaking news. Please check back for additional updates.
A worker unloads a new Tesla Model 3 from a truck at a logistics drop zone in Seattle, Washington, US, on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Tesla posted its third-quarter vehicle production and deliveries report on Wednesday. The stock fell about 3.5% in premarket trading after the report.
Here are the key numbers:
Total deliveries Q3 2024: 462,890
Total production Q3 2024: 469,796
Analysts were expecting deliveries of 463,310 in the period ending Sept. 30, according to estimates compiled by FactSet StreetAccount.
Deliveries are not defined in Tesla’s financial disclosures, but are the closest approximation to units sold reported by the company. It’s one of the most closely-watched metrics on Wall Street.
In the year-ago period, Tesla reported 435,059 deliveries and production of 430,488 EVs. Last quarter, the company reported 443,956 deliveries, and production of 410,831 vehicles.
Tesla is facing increased competitive pressure, especially in China, from companies like BYD and Geely, along with a new generation of automakers, including Li Auto and Nio.
In the U.S., EV competitors like Rivian are maturing, while legacy automakers Ford and General Motors are selling more electric vehicles after walking back more ambitious goals for electrification.
GM this week reported a roughly 60% increase in EV sales for the third quarter from a year earlier. Still, its electric business is tiny compared to Tesla’s, with just 32,100 units sold in the latest period, accounting for 4.9% of the company’s total sales.
Ford plans to report results on Wednesday.
Tesla hasn’t issued specific guidance for 2024 deliveries, but executives have said they expect a lower delivery growth rate this year versus last despite the company having added a new vehicle, the angular stainless steel Cybertruck, to their lineup.
The company also said on Wednesday that it deployed 6.9 GWh of energy storage products in the quarter.
Shares of Tesla climbed 32% in the third quarter, erasing their loss for the year in the process. The stock is now up almost 4% in 2024, trailing the Nasdaq, which has gained 19%.
Tesla’s brand has been under pressure in the U.S. due in part to the antics of CEO Elon Musk, who, in addition to endorsing former President Donald Trump, has shared what the White House called “racist hate,” and false claims about immigrants and election fraud on X, his social media app.
But Tesla still sells more battery electric vehicles in the U.S. than any other automaker, with Hyundai a distant second.
In its third-quarter earnings report later this month, investors will be particularly focused on profit margins.
Tesla has continued to offer attractive financing options and an array of incentives to drive sales volume in recent months in China as well as in the U.S. Prior to earnings, Tesla will host a marketing event on Oct. 10, and is expected to show off the design of “dedicated robotaxi.”
Musk has promised Tesla self-driving cars for years, but the company has yet to deliver. Meanwhile competitors like Waymo and Pony.ai have begun operating commercial robotaxi services.
Volkswagen AG cut its guidance for a second time this year, warning that waning demand will undercut the German carmaker’s profitability as it squares off with unions over possible job cuts and unprecedented plant closures.
The manufacturer said Friday that it now sees an operating margin of 5.6%. That’s down from a prediction of as much as 7% in July, when VW previously lowered its expectations, partly due to expected costs from closing an Audi plant in Belgium. Net cash flow in the automotive division is now expected to be less than half the level the company had foreseen.
All three major German carmakers — Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz Group AG and BMW AG — have now warned about their profit this month. They’re each struggling with slower sales in China, where buyers are holding back because of a deepening real estate crisis. Rising competition in electric vehicles also is driving steep discounts and crimping margins, all while declining consumer confidence saps demand for combustion-engine cars.
Volkswagen’s outlook cut adds to the challenges for Chief Executive Officer Oliver Blume, who has warned that costs in Germany are too high as EV growth slows and Chinese manufacturers led by BYD Co. push into Europe.
The company is considering plant closures in Germany for the first time in its history and has scrapped decades-long job security pledges as it tries to become more competitive. Executives have flagged about two car plants’ worth of excess capacity, which put them on course for a protracted conflict with powerful labor groups.
“The news aids the VW brand’s case to close overcapacity in Germany,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Giacomo Reghelin said. “As with Mercedes, we expect further profit warnings to follow.”
VW now expects net cash flow in the automotive division to reach around €2 billion ($2.2 billion), down from as much as €4.5 billion previously, partly because of M&A activities including a partnership with Rivian Automotive Inc. on EV technology.
Volkswagen said its namesake passenger-car brand and its commercial vehicles unit are performing below expectations. It flagged added risks for its high-volume carmaking group, which also includes Skoda and Seat, citing a “deterioration in the macroeconomic environment.”
The company’s global deliveries will drop to around 9 million units this year, from 9.24 million in 2023, VW said Friday. The automaker had previously forecast a 3% increase.
Earlier this month, rival BMW warned its 2024 earnings would be significantly lower than a year ago after a faulty braking system from supplier Continental AG prompted a recall and halt to deliveries of some 1.5 million vehicles. The auto-making operating margin would be as low as 6%, compared to a previous low of 8%, the company forecast.
Mercedes-Benz followed with its own warning as the deepening rout in China hurt sales of its most expensive models like the S-Class and Maybach sedans. Adjusted returns this year would be between 7.5% and 8.5%, compared with an earlier forecast of as much as 11%, and earnings before interest and taxes will be “significantly below” the prior year level, the automaker said last week.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024.
David Swanson | Reuters
The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked a federal judge to sanction Elon Musk if he continues to violate the court’s order to appear for a deposition in a probe of his 2022 Twitter acquisition.
The SEC has been investigating whether Musk or anyone else working with him committed securities fraud in 2022 as the Tesla CEO sold shares in his automaker and shored up a stake in Twitter, ahead of his leveraged buyout of the company now known as X.
In May, the court ordered Musk to appear for a deposition by the financial regulators regarding the Twitter deal.
“Musk has now failed to appear before the SEC twice: first in September 2023, in defiance of a lawful administrative subpoena, and last week, in defiance of a clear court order,” SEC attorney Robin Andrews said in the Friday filing.
Andrews asked the judge to consider sanctions should Musk delay further, according to the filing.
“The Court must make clear that Musk’s gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease,” Andrews wrote.
The filing also revealed, in a footnote, that the SEC intends to ask the court to hold Musk in “civil contempt” for canceling a deposition on Sept. 10, giving the agency only a few hours notice that he would not appear. Musk’s cancellation cost the SEC time and money after it sent personnel to Los Angeles to depose him and he didn’t appear for the investigative interview, the agency said.
Musk’s deposition in the probe has been rescheduled for a date in early October at an SEC office, the filing said.
“Without further action by the Court, nothing deters Musk” from “simply failing to show up for that date,” Andrews wrote.
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, a partner at Quinn Emanuel in New York, wrote in a response that “such drastic action would be inappropriate,” adding that the SEC and Musk had agreed rescheduling would be permissible in light of an emergency.
Additionally, Musk and his companies have “cooperated and are cooperating with the SEC in multiple other ongoing investigations,” Spiro wrote.
In a separate, civil lawsuit concerning the same Twitter deal, the Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System has sued Musk in a federal court in New York accusing him of deliberately concealing his progressive investments in Twitter and intent to buy out the company.
The pension fund’s attorneys argue that Musk, by failing to clearly disclose his investments in and intentions to buy Twitter, had influenced other shareholders’ decisions and put them at a disadvantage.
Discovery from that case in New York yielded correspondence between an unnamed person at Morgan Stanley, and the executive who manages Musk’s money, Jared Birchall. In the messages, the Morgan Stanley contact wrote in February 2022 that Musk’s Twitter stock-buying strategy was closely held.
“No one knows what is going on and why but you and me,” the person at Morgan Stanley wrote. “Not compliance, not anyone.”
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, July 24, 2024.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Brazil’s supreme court announced Friday that it ordered banks to transfer funds from Starlink and X accounts to pay fines the court levied against Elon Musk’s social network.
The court’s top justice, Alexandre de Moraes, and a panel of five other justices, found that X had repeatedly violated Brazilian law when it refused to appoint a legal representative in the country, and when it refused to remove content or profiles from its platform that the court determined to be harmful towards democratic institutions in Brazil.
The court had nearly 18.4 million Brazilian reals, or approximately $3.3 million, transferred out of the accounts. Musk acquired X, then known as Twitter, in 2022. Starlink is the satellite internet service run by SpaceX.
Following the transfers, the court ordered that the frozen bank accounts and assets of X and Starlink be released, saying there was no longer any need to keep them.
The court suspended X at the end of August, and the suspension remains in place.
Musk and his businesses have said they view the actions of de Moraes as “illegal,” and his court’s orders as having been issued without due process. X and SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Brazilian news agency UOL reported earlier this month that some of the accounts de Moraes ordered Musk to suspend at X belong to users who allegedly threatened federal police officers involved in a probe of former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro has been accused of instigating Brazil’s Jan. 8 riots and of attempting to stage a coup there.
Musk is a proponent of Bolsonaro, in part because the former Brazilian president authorized his business Starlink to operate in the country.
Musk has been ramping up insults and calls to impeach de Moraes since April. On Sept. 5, his long-time collaborator at the helm of SpaceX, COO Gwynne Shotwell, also took shots at the Brazil supreme court online.
She wrote, “@Alexandre, please stop harassing Starlink and let us keep serving the people of Brazil.”
Backers of de Moraes and the STF have seen the orders against X Corp. as an assertion of Brazilian sovereignty.
Cylib, a startup backed by Porsche and Bosch, is building a huge electric vehicle battery recycling facility in Dormagen, a town in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region.
Cylib
A massive battery recycling plant is being built in Germany by Cylib, a startup looking to reduce waste from EV batteries that have reached the end of their life.
Cylib, which is backed by luxury sports car firm Porsche and appliances maker Bosch, on Monday started work on the new site in the town of Dormagen, in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
More than 180 million euros ($200 million) is being pumped into the facility, which is expected to span 236,000 square feet and will produce recycled batteries for the electric vehicle industry in Europe.
Cylib says its facility will be the largest end-to-end lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Europe.
It plans to recycle roughly 30,000 metric tons of end-of-life batteries at the facility each year, making it larger in scale than the current biggest plant, Hydrovolt, a joint venture between Swedish EV battery maker Northvolt and Norway-based aluminum and renewable energy firm Hydro.
Hydrovolt has capacity to recycle 12,000 metric tons of end-of-life batteries annually, according to Hydro’s website.
Recycled batteries produced by Cylib’s new facility are expected to be used by Porsche, which invested in the startup as part of a 55 million euro funding round, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The source, who preferred to remain anonymous as the information is not yet public, added that the plans are still in the early stages and have not yet been formalized.
Asked about Porsche’s involvement in the project, a Cylib spokesperson said that investments from partners like Porsche are “strategic,” adding that it is working closely with its investors about process industrialization and commercial partnerships.
Battery recycling is a key priority for the European Union, which is looking to ensure the sustainable development of batteries needed to fuel the transition to electric vehicles.
Founded in 2022 by German entrepreneur Lilian Schwich, her husband Gideon Schwich, and Paul Sabarny, Cylib uses water-based lithium and graphite recovery techniques to repurpose materials from batteries that have hit the end of their lifespan.
Earlier this year, the firm raised 55 million euros of financing from investors including climate-focused venture capital firm World Fund, Porsche Ventures, Bosch, and DeepTech & Climate Fonds.
Cylib said the new plant would primarily serve automotive, battery manufacturing and chemicals clients. The startup wants it to be the first of many, with further facilities planned elsewhere in Germany and Europe within the next few years.
The new facility is being built on a brownfield site located at Chempark, an industrial space used primarily by the chemicals industry. Cylib said that the location was strategic, with preexisting supply chains already located on-site.
Operations at the plant are scheduled to commence in 2026. The move is key to Cylib’s ability to reach mass production, said CEO Lilian Schwich.
“Cylib reaching industrial scale production will be a key driver in building a robust European battery infrastructure,” Schwich said in a press statement.
“Battery recycling is pioneering the circular economy, proving that economic success is compatible with reduced environmental impact,” she added.
DETROIT – General Motors is folding its all-electric BrightDrop commercial vans into the Chevrolet brand in an attempt to increase sales, accessibility and recognition of the vehicles.
The change is expected to expand the selling and service points from a handful of dealers to Chevrolet’s large network of North American dealers, including more than 500 commercial-focused stores in the U.S., according to Sandor Piszar, vice president of the GM Envolve fleet business in North America.
“It’s got that strength of the Chevrolet brand behind it,” he told CNBC. “It’s absolutely going to drive volume. It helps our customers that choose to go into EVs to easily do so working with the Chevrolet dealer they know and trust now for their other fleet needs.”
The number of new dealers will be based on the amount that decide to opt in to selling and servicing the vans. To sell commercial EVs, dealers must have specific vehicle lifts, service bays and employee training, among other things.
GM declined to disclose the average cost for a dealer to become certified to sell the BrightDrop products, citing expenses will vary based on the store.
BrightDrop currently sells two all-electric commercial vans, called the Zevo 400 and Zevo 600, which are used for things such as package delivery. Starting later this year with the 2025 model year, those vans will be rebranded as Chevrolet BrightDrop 400 and 600 vans.
“Chevy’s our top-selling fleet brand for General Motors.” Piszar said. “This makes absolute perfect sense for GM Envolve and Chevrolet.”
The Thursday announcement is the latest change for BrightDrop, which GM launched in 2021 as a fully owned subsidiary before folding it into the company’s fleet business last year.
GM had high expectations of making BrightDrop into a new, lucrative growth business for the automaker, but sales and revenue are not believed to have met the company’s initial expectations.
BrightDrop was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2023. GM declined to disclose BrightDrop’s revenue, but it’s highly unlikely the target was achieved.
The automaker only sold about 500 BrightDrop vans in 2023. GM reports BrightDrop’s sales through the first six months of 2024 were 746 units.
The vans are produced at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump admitted to tempering his strident opposition to electric vehicles in order to gain the endorsement of billionaire Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla.
The former president, well known for the transactional nature of his politics, has championed an economic agenda relying heavily on cheap, plentiful energy through fracking and mining of U.S. fossil fuel deposits that drive climate change. Tesla’s stated mission however is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
Speaking to supporters in Atlanta, Trump now said EVs aren’t all that bad, adding they could continue being a small slice of the U.S. car market should he retake the White House.
“I’m for electric cars. I have to be, you know, because Elon Musk endorsed me very strongly,” he said in comments shared widely throughout Musk’s fanbase by accounts like John Stringer’s Tesla Owners Silicon Valley and blogsiteTeslarati. “So I have no choice.”
“I am for electric cars. I have to because Elon Musk endorsed me very strongly, Elon. So, I have no choice.”
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) August 5, 2024
Last month the New York real estate mogul pledged to roll back President Biden’s EV subsidies, which he labelled a “green new scam,” on day one of a second Trump administration.
Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Thursday, Trump explained all the electric cars in the future will be made in China, since the United States doesn’t have the mineral resources of its rival, the world market leader in processing battery-grade lithium.
“They don’t go far [and] they cost too much,” he said, referring to EVs. “I like Tesla, but you know what? It’s limited.”
His vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, meanwhile has pushed a bill called the “Drive American Act” that would repeal Biden’s $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs and hand them instead to conventional combustion engine cars.
This has put Musk on the backfoot, forcing the EV champion to claim late last month Trump’s hostility to EVs would harm his competition more than it would Tesla itself.
Musk’s brand sells roughly as many EVs in the U.S. as all its other competitors combined. Along with China’s BYD, it is one of the only two carmakers in the world to build EVs profitably at scale.
Consumers fleeing brand in Europe
Nevertheless, Elon Musk’s brand of right-wing politics, increasingly ardent since he acquired Twitter at the end of October 2022, has fractured the Tesla community into those that support its mission to phase out fossil fuels and tech enthusiasts that back Musk first and foremost.
Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests this has contributed to a small but growing number of customers abandoning the brand for competitors like Rivian, especially in Tesla’s own stronghold of California.
Europe, whose EV market is 60% larger than the U.S., has seen a plunge in Tesla demand as the tycoon embraced the continent’s far right, an ally of Trump, who is highly controversial on the continent. As president, Trump cozied up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin while branding European Union as America’s real “foe” in the region.
Musk’s engagement with political fringe parties like the AfD, under official observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence service as a danger to democracy, has soured support for the brand in an EV-friendly market where consumers are already spoiled for choice.
On Monday, registration data published for Germany, the UK and France—the three largest EV markets in Europe—showed Tesla sales in the first seven months drop 41%, 13% and 28%, respectively, over the previous year’s period.
By comparison the most recent continent-wide data showed EV sales edged 1.6% higher in the first half of this year, implying all other brands dramatically outperformed Tesla.
DETROIT — A once “dirty” word, and business, in the automotive industry has become a multibillion-dollar battleground for U.S. automakers, led by Ford Motor.
The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker has turned its fleet business, which includes sales to commercial, government and rental customers, into an earnings powerhouse. And Ford’s crosstown rivals General Motors and Chrysler parent Stellantis have taken notice, restructuring their operations as well.
“There’s much more of an emphasis now on profitability and how fleet can help that,” said Mark Hazel, S&P Global Mobility associate director of commercial vehicle reporting. “[Automakers] are looking at how they strategically go about this. It’s been a very targeted approach with how they deal with fleets.”
Many fleet sales, especially daily rentals, have historically been viewed as a negative for auto companies. They are traditionally less profitable than sales to retail customers and are used by automakers at times as a dumping ground to unload excess vehicle inventories and boost sales.
But Ford has proven that’s not always the case by breaking out financial results for its “Ford Pro” fleet business. The operations have raked in about $18.7 billion in adjusted earnings and $184.5 billion in revenue since 2021.
Such results have led Wall Street to praise the business, as analysts have called it a “hidden gem” and Ford’s “Ferrari,” referring to the highly profitable Italian sports car manufacturer.
“No other company has Ford Pro. We intend to fully press that advantage,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said July 24 during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, in which Ford Pro was the dominant performer.
Fleet sales typically account for 18% to 20% of annual industrywide U.S. light-duty vehicle sales, which exclude some larger trucks and vans, according to J.D. Power.
Part of the opportunity in fleet sales comes from the aging vehicles on U.S. roadways. The average age of the 25 million fleet and commercial vehicles on American roads was 17.5 years last year, according to S&P. That compares with light-duty passenger vehicles at 12.4 years in 2023.
While commercial sales, which are viewed as the best fleet sales, are estimated to be slightly lower this year compared with 2023, both GM and Stellantis have recently redesigned and doubled down on such operations. However, neither reports such results out separately.
“Breaking apart the fleet channel, we see that Commercial sales have been the weakest. And zooming in further, there are just two [original equipment manufacturers] that appear especially challenged: STLA and, to a lesser extent, GM,” Wolfe Research said in an investor note Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Ford’s commercial volumes have increased a “strong” 7% this year compared with 2023, Wolfe said.
While fleet sales data isn’t as available as retail, Wolfe Research estimates Ford is by far the leader in such earnings at a forecast of $9.5 billion this year. That compares with North American operations at GM at $5.5 billion and Stellantis around $3.5 billion, Wolfe estimates.
S&P Global Mobility reports Ford has been the fleet leader for some time. Since 2021, Ford’s market share of new fleet vehicle registrations (categorized by businesses with 10 or more vehicles weighing under 26,000 pounds) has been about 30%. GM, meanwhile, had around 21%-22% during that time, and Stellantis about 9%.
GM, citing third-party data, claims it outsold Ford last year in a segment of fleet sales: commercial vehicles sold exclusively to businesses (with five or more vehicles) and not individual buyers.
Ford, meanwhile, said it counts “all customers who register their full-size, Class 1-7 truck or van under their business,” not just those with five or more vehicles.
Ford claims to lead sales of commercial vehicles, categorized as Class 1-7 trucks and vans, with a roughly 43% share of U.S. registrations through May of this year. That’s up 2.3 percentage points compared with a year earlier, the company said.
The Ford Pro business is led by sales of the automaker’s Super Duty trucks, which are part of its F-Series truck lineup with the Ford F-150, and range from large pickups to commercial trucks and chassis cabs.
It also covers sales of Transit vans in North America and Europe, all sales of the Ranger midsize pickup in Europe, and service parts, accessories and services for commercial, government and rental customers.
Ford Super Duty trucks are seen at the Kentucky Truck assembly plant in Louisville, Kentucky, on April 27, 2023.
Joe White | Reuters
But automakers, including Ford, also see fleet operations as a key driver in other ways, including for electric vehicle sales, as well as reoccurring revenue options such as software and logistical services.
“This revenue has gross margins of 50-plus-percent which drives significant operating leverage and improved capital efficiency,” Farley said during the quarterly call. “The major part of this new software business is actually Ford Pro.”
Ford is aiming to achieve $1 billion in sales of software and services in 2025, led by its fleet and commercial business.
“Ford Pro is core to Ford, and there is potential upside on volumes as well as in software and service,” BofA’s John Murphy said Thursday in an investor note. “On software, Ford Pro accounts for ~80% of Ford’s software subscriptions with an attach rate of only 12%, which is projected to grow to 35%+ over the next few years.”
As Ford touts its fleet business, its closest rivals have amped up their operations.
Chrysler parent Stellantis is relaunching its “Ram Professional” unit this year with goals of achieving record profitability in 2025 and, eventually, becoming the No. 1 seller of light-duty commercial vehicles, which exclude some larger vehicles.
Christine Feuell, CEO of Stellantis’ Ram brand, declined to disclose a time frame for achieving that target but said the automaker believes it can do so after completely revamping its operations to focus on better mainstreaming operations for customers and earnings growth through sales and new services.
“It’s a highly profitable business. Not only on the product side, but on the services side,” she told CNBC during a media event last week. “Software and connected services are really a significant growth opportunity for us as well.
“We’re a little bit behind Ford in launching those services, but we definitely expect to see similar kinds of growth and revenues generated from those connected services.”
Ram makes up about 80% of Stellantis’ U.S. fleet and commercial business. It has a new or revamped lineup of trucks and vans coming to market, plus a host of connected and telematics products to assist fleet customers. It also increased the availability of financing and lending for commercial customers.
“This year truly begins our commercial offensive,” Ken Kayser, vice president of Stellantis North American commercial vehicle operations, said during the media event. “2024 is a foundational year for our brand, as we look to build momentum into 2025.”
GM isn’t sitting idle either. It has revamped its fleet and commercial business. It launched “GM Envolve” last year, its overhauled fleet and commercial business focused on fleet sales, digital telematics and logistics for commercial customers.
Sandor Piszar, vice president of GM Envolve in North America, said the Detroit automaker views the business as a competitive advantage not just to sell vehicles but to create reoccurring revenue and relationships with businesses.
2021 GMC Sierra HD pickup
GM
GM Envolve, formerly known as GM Fleet, reorganized the automaker’s business to be a one-stop shop for fleet customers — from sales and financing to fleet management, logistics and maintenance.
“GM Envolve is a critically important piece of General Motors business. It’s a profitable business,” he told CNBC earlier this year. “We think it is a competitive advantage in the approach we’re taking in this consultative approach of a single point of contact and coordinating the full portfolio that General Motors has to offer.”
GM and Stellantis declined to disclose the earnings and profitability of their fleet businesses.
GM Envolve includes the company’s EV commercial business BrightDrop, which was folded back into the automaker last year instead of it acting as a subsidiary. It didn’t accomplish the growth GM had expected, but EVs have an opening for automakers’ fleet and commercial sales.
“BrightDrop is a great opportunity for General Motors and for GM Envolve,” Piszar said, citing all-electric vans specifically for last-mile deliveries as well as small local businesses. “There’s a lot of use cases and as we ramp up production and get customers to try the vehicle that’s a key piece of our model.”
Unlike retail customers, many fleet and commercial customers have predefined routes or schedules that could accommodate EVs well because they drive locally in a region and could charge overnight when electricity costs are lower.
Brightdrop EV600 van
Source: Brightdrop
S&P Global reports EV startup Rivian Automotive led the U.S. in all-electric cargo van registrations last year, roughly doubling Ford, its closest competitor, at No. 2.
While the upfront investment is high, automakers have argued the eventual payback could be worthwhile for some businesses.
All three of the legacy Detroit automakers are touting such advantages to their fleet customers, while still offering traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines.
Stellantis and Ford also have started highlighting their portfolios of different powertrains such as hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles as adoption of EVs has not occurred as quickly as many had expected.
Ford last month announced plans valued at about $3 billion to expand Super Duty production, including to “electrify” Super Duty trucks.
“We’ve gone to, on all of our commercial vehicles, a multi-energy platform so we will offer customers the choice that we think no other competitor will have,” Farley said during the earnings call. “We believe we will be a first mover, if not the first mover, in multi-energy Super Duty.”
Jim Cramer’s daily rapid fire looks at stocks in the news outside the CNBC Investing Club portfolio. Corning : Shares of the specialty materials company popped more than 10.5% on Monday after pre-announcing better-than-expected earnings. Management is now forecasting higher revenue and earnings-per-share on the high end of previous guidance for the second quarter. The company is set to report on July 30. Shares of Corning, which makes glass for Apple devices, reached their highest levels since February 2022. Tesla : Shares of the electric vehicle leader made a huge, 27% increase last week after the company delivered better-than-expected second-quarter production and deliveries. The stock jumped another nearly 3% on Monday. Cramer called the rally a short squeeze — meaning investors betting Tesla stock would go down were forced to cover as it ripped higher. JPMorgan : The bank caught a rare downgrade, with Wolfe Research taking its rating to peer perform from outperform (hold from buy) on valuation and exposure to lower net interest income given the threat of lower Federal Reserve interest rates approaching. Cramer said he’s concerned heading into JPMorgan’s second-quarter earnings Friday since there was a big sell-off following its Q1 release in April when the bank guided flat NII for 2024. “I don’t want the stock coming in hot,” he added. Domino’s Pizza : The pizza delivery chain was upgraded to an outperform rating from a neutral (buy from hold) at Baird. The analysts also raised their price target to $580 per share from $530. Baird sees the recent 7.4% pullback in Domino’s stock over the last eight sessions as an opportunity. They cited strong fundamentals, product pipeline, and management. Cramer thought this was a fair call since Domino’s CEO Russell Weiner is “crushing it.” ServiceNow : Shares of the enterprise software company took an over 4% dive on Monday after Guggenheim downgraded the stock to sell from neutral. The analysts said the company will get a boost from its generative artificial intelligence business in the second half of this year but won’t see that momentum into 2025. Cramer said the call was contrary to CEO Bill McDermott’s stance that generative AI offerings have been resonating with customers.
Elon Musk attends “Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in Conversation with Elon Musk” during the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity 2024 – Day Three in Cannes, France, on June 19, 2024.
Marc Piasecki | Getty Images
Tesla’s stock price rose enough on Friday to wipe out its loss for the year and bring its gain for the week to 27%.
Shares of the electric vehicle maker closed Friday at $251.55. They ended last year at $248.48, and proceeded to fall as low as $138.80 in April.
The latest rally was sparked by a better-than-expected deliveries report for the second quarter on Tuesday. While deliveries still dropped 4.8% from a year earlier, the falloff was less steep than the first-quarter decline, and gave investors reasons for optimism heading into the second half.
In April, Tesla shares hit a 52-week low after a string of troubling developments. Sales in the core automotive business fell in the first quarter, the company downsized through sweeping layoffs and there were reports that Tesla had scrapped plans to soon produce a low-cost family car at its Texas factory.
Tesla is set to deliver second-quarter financial results after the bell on July 23. Automotive gross margins are likely to be in focus.
Since last year, Tesla has been offering extensive discounts and incentives to attract customers to its aging lineup of EVs, including its popular entry-level Model 3 sedans, Model Y crossover utility vehicles and its more expensive flagship Model S sedans and Model X SUVs.
In late 2023, Tesla started selling its angular Cybertruck. A Tesla Cybertruck account on social media site X posted on Thursday that the truck had become the bestselling fully electric pickup in the U.S. in the second quarter.
Ford reported sales of its fully electric model, the F-150 Lightning, totaling 7,902 in the second quarter and 15,645 through June of this year.
Tesla did not respond to CNBC’s request for more information.
Beyond the upcoming earnings report, Cantor Fitzgerald analysts wrote in a note on Tuesday that they expect a marketing event — Tesla’s Robotaxi Day — early next month to be a catalyst for the stock.
“TSLA has previously disclosed plans for a Robotaxi (or Cybercab), which the company plans to unveil on August 8,” they wrote. “Although we don’t expect this segment to launch prior to 2027, we do expect it to be a meaningful business segment for the company over the long term.”
Still, Cantor Fitzgerald expects Tesla to deliver fewer cars this year than last. The firm has a price target of $230 on Tesla and recommends buying the stock.
While Tesla has bounced back, it is lagging behind the broader market for the year. The Nasdaq is up 22% in 2024, and the S&P 500 has gained 17%. Tesla is now up 1.2%.
A recent Axios Harris poll found the company is experiencing brand deterioration that is at least partly due to Musk’s “antics” and “political rants.” A New York Times survey out this week also said Musk’s “polarizing statements” and “political activity” are driving away some “left-leaning consumers.”
Tesla is also still years delayed in delivering software that can turn its existing vehicles into self-driving cars. Musk announced on Oct. 19, 2016, that all Tesla cars being produced at that time had the necessary hardware to make them self-driving. But in late June, he said another hardware and sensor setup is on the way to enable that capability.
Visitors are looking at a BYD DM-i electric car at the 2024 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing, China, on May 3, 2024. (Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Shares of Chinese electric vehicle makers mostly surged on Thursday after the European Union announced higher tariffs of up to 38% on Chinese EVs a day earlier.
Chinese EV-maker BYD, which was the top gainer on the Hang Seng Index, jumped 8% during morning trade but pared some gains to trade at about 6% in the afternoon. Geely was up about 4% initially, while counterparts Nio and Li Auto saw their shares climb about 1.5%. State-backed SAIC was down 1.5% in later afternoon trade.
Citi analysts said the EU’s additional tariffs were “generally benign,” while one analyst from Morningstar pointed out that the additional duties were “modest” in comparison to U.S. hikes on Chinese EVs last month.
BYD vs Geely
On Wednesday, the EU said it would impose extra tariffs on Chinese EV players with a large footprint in Europe. BYD will be subject to additional tariffs of 17.4%, Geely will get an extra 20% duty. SAIC will have to pay additional duties of 38.1% – the highest among the three. This is on top of the standard 10% duty already imposed on imported EVs.
All three manufacturers were sampled in the EU probe, which is ongoing.
Other Chinese EV firms, which cooperated in the investigation but have not been sampled, would be subjected to 21% in extra tariffs while those which did not cooperate in the investigation would face 38.1% in additional duties, the commission said.
The punitive tariffs could be impactful for the EV sector, but would not derail China’s ongoing recovery.
The EU said in a statement it has provisionally concluded that Chinese EV makers benefits from “unfair subsidization,” which resulted in “threat of economic injury” to EU’s EV industry.
“The move is modest compared with the stiff 100% tariffs on Chinese EV imports into the U.S., hiked from 25% last month, by the Joe Biden administration and the 25% provisional duties are in line with market expectations of 20%-25%, in our view,” said Vincent Sun, equity analyst at Morningstar, in a Wednesday note.
Citi analysts on Thursday said the tariff hike is “generally benign” compared to their estimates of 25% to 30%. “The punitive tariffs could be impactful for the EV sector, but would not derail China’s ongoing recovery,” said Citi.
The additional duties come after the EU launched a probe in October. The duties are currently provisional, but will be introduced from July 4 in the event that discussions with Chinese authorities do not result in a resolution, the commission said in a statement. Definitive measures will be placed within four months of the imposition of provisional duties, the bloc said.
In response to the provisional duties, China said Wednesday the move was “blatant protectionism that will create and escalate trade frictions.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce said Beijing was “deeply concerned and strongly dissatisfied” with the development as it “disrupts and distorts” the global EV industry.
Joseph Webster, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, said the EU “seems to be warning” Chinese state-backed SAIC to build a production facility within Europe, or else face tariffs.
“China’s SAIC group received the maximum tariff rate of 38.1 percent. The automaker has a limited footprint on the continent, and it has yet to select a site for its first European production facility, despite nearly a year of consideration,” said Webster in a Wednesday report.
“Both BYD and Geely have substantial investments in Europe,” Webster said.
Setting up local factories could be “the ultimate solution” for China’s original equipment manufacturers in the long run, Nomura analysts said Thursday, adding that these companies have started to seek overseas expansion “in order to better fit into the global auto market.”
China’s reaction is the next thing to look out for, analysts said, with possible retaliation from Beijing.
Citi said China “looks set to retaliate but not escalate,” as the “benign” tariffs could bring “contained retaliation.”
“The key here will be how China reacts to this, and then also how the EU reacts to some of these requests [from] companies like Tesla to reconsider the tariffs,” said Paul Triolo, partner for China and technology policy lead at Albright Stonebridge Group.
“The danger is getting into sort of a tit-for-tat tariff battle here. Nobody seems to want this,” Triolo told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Thursday, adding that the Commission may “show some flexibility, as they did in making this decision.”
A humanoid robotics startup cofounded by the CEO of bankrupt fintech firm Synapse has canvassed Silicon Valley investors for funds by claiming close ties and an imminent investment from General Motors — claims rejected by the automaker.
The company, called Foundation Robotics Labs, is seeking the last $1 million in funds for an $11 million seed round, according to documents obtained by CNBC. The investor pitch claimed GM had already committed to an investment, along with the Menlo Park-based VC firm Tribe Capital.
“Foundation is building humanoid robots to take over work that humans do in factories, warehouses and eventually homes,” the startup declared.
On top of the seed investment, the fundraising document said GM was set to be Foundation’s first customer, with a targeted $300 million purchase order, and had also provided access to its factories to help them train its robots.
“GM agreed to let us collect the ground truth data in their factories,” Foundation said in the document. “Our team is in their Mexico factory this week to start the collection process. We would probably be the only company in this space with a dataset like this.”
But, according to GM and one of the startup’s founders, most of Foundation’s claims related to the automaker are exaggerated or untrue.
While GM met with Foundation executives a few times, it hasn’t allowed data collection from its factories, has no agreements for robot orders and isn’t planning an investment, according to a GM spokesman.
“GM has never invested in Foundation Robotics and has no plans to do so,” spokesman Darryll Harrison said in an emailed statement. “In fact, GM has never had an agreement of any kind with the company. Any claims to the contrary are fabricated.”
In a phone interview with CNBC, one of Foundation’s cofounders, Mike LeBlanc, confirmed GM’s points and said he was embarrassed that marketing materials existed that overstated their relationship.
“The engineering stuff we’ve done is really incredible, and it’s the bedrock of what this company will be,” LeBlanc said. “That, to me is what Foundation Robotics is.”
Foundation was started in April by Synapse CEO Sankaet Pathak, Tribe Capital CEO Arjun Sethi, and LeBlanc, cofounder of Cobalt Robotics, a maker of autonomous security guards, according to the company’s fundraising pitch.
It’s raising money at a time when American corporations look to automate more of their labor: 25% of capital spending by industrial companies in the coming years will be on automated systems, according to McKinsey.
The misleading fundraising pitch was shared in an email group with about 1,500 startup executives and investors this month, according to one of the recipients. The contents of the document were confirmed by someone with direct knowledge of Tribe Capital.
Tribe Capital and its cofounder Sethi declined to comment, while Pathak didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
The robotics startup finds itself in the spotlight after the implosion of Pathak’s other company, Synapse, which enabled fintech brands like Mercury and Dave to offer banking services by connecting them to FDIC-backed banks.
Cofounded by Pathak in 2014, Synapse went bankrupt earlier this year after some of its largest clients, including Mercury, left its platform. Mercury, which instead pursued a direct relationship with Evolve, later had disagreements with Synapse over contract issues.
The mess has left more than 100,000 Americans with a combined $265 million in deposits locked out of their accounts for more than a month, according to a trustee appointed to oversee the firm’s bankruptcy proceedings.
Making matters worse, there is an $85 million shortfall between what partner banks of Synapse are holding and what depositors are owed, and no answers yet on what happened to the missing funds, according to the trustee.
Pathak’s move to his next venture, coming on the heels of the still-ongoing Synapse failure, has raised eyebrows among some founders and investors in the startup community.
United Auto Workers (UAW) members and supporters on a picket line outside the ZF Chassis Systems plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023.
Andi Rice | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Mercedes-Benz workers in Alabama have voted against union representation by the United Auto Workers, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday.
The results are a blow to the UAW’s organizing efforts a month after the Detroit union won an organizing drive of roughly 4,330 Volkswagen plant workers in Tennessee. Voting started Monday and ended Friday.
Union organizing failed with 56% of the vote, or 2,642 workers, casting ballots against the UAW, according to the NLRB, which oversaw the election. More than 90% of the 5,075 eligible Mercedes-Benz workers voted in the election, according to the results.
The NLRB said 51 ballots were challenged and not counted, but they aren’t determinative to the outcome of the election. There were five void ballots.
The union and company have five business days to file objections to the election, including any alleged interference, according to the NLRB. If no objections are filed, the election result will be certified, and the union will have to wait one year to file for a union election for a similar bargaining unit.
Mercedes-Benz in a statement said company officials “look forward to continuing to work directly with our Team Members to ensure [Mercedes-Benz US International] is not only their employer of choice, but a place they would recommend to friends and family.”
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain (right) and UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock (left) lead a march outside Stellantis’ Ram 1500 plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan after the union called a strike at the plant on Oct. 23, 2023.
Michael Wayland / CNBC
The loss is expected to hurt the UAW in an unprecedented organizing drive launched late last year of 13 non-union automakers in the U.S. after securing record contracts with Detroit automakers Ford Motor,General Motors and Stellantis. Those agreements included significant wage increase, reinstatement of cost-of-living adjustments and other benefits.
UAW President Shawn Fain said while the Mercedes-Benz vote was obviously not the result the union wanted, it was a valiant effort, adding the vote “isn’t a failure” but a “bump in the road.”
“While this loss stings, I’ll tell you this, we’re going to keep our heads up, keep our heads up high. These workers have nothing to do but be proud in the effort they put forth and what they’ve done,” he said Friday during a media conference. “We fought the good fight and we’re going to continue on, continue forward. Ultimately, these workers here are going to win.”
The Mercedes-Benz vote was expected to be more challenging for the union than the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, where the union had already established a presence after two failed organizing drives in the past decade and where it faced less opposition from the automaker.
Stephen Silvia, author of “The UAW’s Southern Gamble: Organizing Workers at Foreign-Owned Vehicle Plants,” noted Mercedes-Benz replaced the plant’s leader weeks ahead of the election. He said companies routinely do this, promising workers changes at their facilities in an effort to stave of organizing.
“Companies do anti-union campaigns because they can be effective, and I think this one was effective,” said Silvia, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C. “A common piece of an anti-union campaign is firing the plant manager … That seems to have persuaded enough of the workers to vote against the union.”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who was one of six Republican governors to condemn the union’s organizing drive, hailed the outcome of the vote.
“The workers in Vance have spoken, and they have spoken clearly! Alabama is not Michigan, and we are not the Sweet Home to the UAW. We urge the UAW to respect the results of this secret ballot election,” she said.
Workers at Mercedes-Benz’s Tuscaloosa plant, located about 60 miles southwest of Birmingham, have produced more than 4 million vehicles since the plant opened in 1997, including 295,000 vehicles in 2023, according to the plant’s website.
The Alabama plant currently produces vehicles such as the gas-powered GLE and GLS Maybach SUVs as well as the all-electric EQS and EQE SUVs.
The NLRB last week said it continues to process and investigate open unfair labor practice charges filed by the UAW against automakers, including six unfair labor practice charges against Mercedes-Benz since March.
Fain said Friday the union would continue to move forward with those charges. He declined to say whether the union plans to challenge the election results, saying he’d “leave that” to the union’s legal team.
The charges allege that Mercedes-Benz has “disciplined employees for discussing unionization at work, prohibited distribution of union materials and paraphernalia, surveilled employees, discharged union supporters, forced employees to attend captive audience meetings, and made statements suggesting that union activity is futile,” the NLRB said.
