(Washington) The Canadian Minister of Transport detects a positive “change” in the approach of the American administration of Joe Biden towards Canada.
Posted at 1:23 p.m.
Omar Alghabra spent Tuesday in Washington, where he met with US officials, including his counterpart, Pete Buttigieg, and senior White House adviser Mitch Landrieu.
The minister maintains that the war in Ukraine has somewhat reframed the relations of the American administration with important trading partners of the United States, notably Canada.
Alghabra said he reiterated on Tuesday Canada’s opposition to President Joe Biden’s original plan to offer additional tax incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles assembled in the United States.
This version of the original plan fell apart in December when Sen. Joe Manchin blocked the Biden administration’s sweeping $2 trillion “Build Back Better” bill.
The White House is currently working on a scaled-down version of the plan, but it’s still unclear whether the Biden administration will bring back the electric vehicle tax credits in their original form – which Ottawa says would hurt the industry badly. Canadian car.
“There is, I think, a new framework for the conversations that are taking place in the United States,” Mr. Alghabra said in an interview Thursday. While I don’t know what the future holds for the electric vehicle tax credit in the United States, I am hopeful that we are now entering a new kind of discussion. »
The vote of Senator Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, became a key factor in the upper house, which is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. He recently suggested that he would never support anything that hurt the Canadian auto industry.
Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, hosted Jason Kenney earlier this month when Alberta’s premier testified in person on Capitol Hill.
The pair have become allies on both sides of the border as the United States seeks ways to both fight inflation while reducing its reliance on fossil fuels from hostile regimes. Mr. Kenney, meanwhile, continues to push the Biden administration to rely more on Canada for its near-term energy needs.
After that May 17 hearing, Senator Manchin said he expected the White House to still be working on some sort of program to encourage American consumers to buy more electric vehicles and reduce dependence on electric vehicles. United States gasoline.
But he insisted he would not support any measure that would hurt automakers north of the border. “It is absolutely out of the question to cause this type of damage,” assured Mr. Manchin. I will never vote for that. »
MM. Both Manchin and Kenney expressed support for the idea of a more closely integrated Canada-US energy “alliance”. This alliance would focus on the need for traditional energy in the short term, as well as reliable bilateral supply chains for critical minerals, so essential to the production of batteries for electric vehicles.
Minister Alghabra said there is also increased interest south of the border about the role Canada could play in strengthening US supply chains for these minerals. “We have more of these critical minerals, and certain types of critical minerals that the United States doesn’t have,” he said. There’s a new interest in this new framework that I think maybe didn’t exist last year. »