President Trump said Thursday that car companies should not switch wholly to making electric vehicles while arguing U.S. job loses in the industry are “not acceptable” and that France is “burning down” because of clean-energy policies.
Trump, during an interview with Fox News, blasted looming General Motors job cuts in the Midwest and mentioned ongoing fuel-tax protests in France.
“They are changing the whole model of General Motors. They going to all electric. That’s not going to work,” Trump said. “I don’t run a car company, but all electric isn’t going to work.”
“It’s wonderful to have it as a percentage of your cars,” he continued, “but to tell me a couple weeks before Christmas that [GM is] going to close in Ohio and Michigan? Not acceptable to me.”
In the same interview, Trump said the international Paris climate accord, from which he withdrew the U.S., “is not working out too well for Paris.”
“That whole country is burning down. I was the one who kept us out of the Paris accord. If I was in the Paris accord, we would be paying trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars for nothing,” he said.
[Read more: Trump’s GM threats put electric vehicles at risk]
