President Biden on Wednesday vetoed a Republican-led effort that could have thwarted the administration’s plans to invest $7.5 billion to build electric vehicle charging stations across the country.
In issuing the veto, Mr. Biden argued that the congressional resolution would have hurt domestic manufacturing as well as the clean energy transition.
“If enacted, this resolution would undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars that the private sector has already invested in domestic E.V. charging manufacturing, and chill further domestic investment in this critical market,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.
The move comes amid a growing political divide over electric vehicles. The Biden administration is aggressively promoting them as an important part of the fight to slow global warming. The landmark climate law signed in 2022 by Mr. Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act, offers incentives to consumers to buy electric vehicles and to manufacturers to build them in the United States.
Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s likely challenger in the 2024 election, have attacked electric vehicles as unreliable, inconvenient and ceding America’s auto manufacturing to China, which dominates the supply chain for electric vehicles.
