The Trump administration will “seriously consider” ending the tax credit for electric vehicles, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday.
Mnuchin made the remark in response to questions at a live Wall Street Journal interview about whether Trump would follow through on his tweeted threat to end the subsidy for electric vehicles for General Motors specifically. The Treasury secretary clarified the administration would seek to end the tax credit across the entire industry, if it takes any action.
“I think if we did it, we do it for all, and that’ something the president wants to seriously consider,” said Mnuchin.
“I don’t think we necessarily need to subsidize electric cars at this point in the cycle,” he said, adding that the electric car industry “should stand on its own.”
Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House National Economic Council, also said Monday the administration would seek to end subsidies for electric vehicles.
The administration would need Congress to change the tax code. Lawmakers are currently weighing the extension of a number of different tax breaks before Democrats take control of the House of Representatives next month.
A spokesperson for retiring Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the lead Republican tax policy writer in the Senate, told the Washington Examiner in an emailed statement last week that, “Chairman Hatch is working with Finance Committee members to determine how to proceed on tax extenders, but generally does not think tax policy should be made in retaliation for business decisions.”
Hatch’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, also said last week that he does not anticipate Trump’s GM threat to be acted upon in the current Congress.
Democrats also generally support the tax credit, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have signaled some openness to repealing the current cap placed on the subsidy, which credits electric vehicle purchasers with $7,500 until an electric car manufacturer has sold 200,000 cars. Tesla and General Motors are approaching that cap.
