President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency will announce on Wednesday a proposed rule to limit tailpipe emissions. That rule, according to the New York Times, will impose a strict emissions limit on vehicles sold—so strict that it will force automakers to ensure that two-thirds of the vehicles they sell are electric by 2032. “This is a massive undertaking,” said Alliance for Automotive Innovation president John Bozzella, who represents U.S. automakers. “It is nothing short of complete transformation of the automotive industrial base and the automotive market.”

If the rule is enacted, it would mark a significant escalation in both electric vehicle sales and U.S. environmental standards. Just 6 percent of vehicles sold last year were electric, and Biden in August 2021 signed an executive order calling for half of all U.S. car sales to be electric by 2030, well below the proposal’s two-thirds benchmark. The rule would also prompt layoffs for autoworkers in states such as Michigan and Ohio, experts say, because electric cars take considerably fewer workers to build than gas-powered cars. …

In addition to auto industry layoffs, Biden’s aggressive transition to electric vehicles would bring major supply chain and infrastructure challenges. China has an iron grip on the minerals required to build electric vehicle batteries, control that helped the communist nation produce 75 percent of the world’s lithium batteries in 2021.

[Yes, while we’re at the mercy of OPEC production quotas, let’s definitely sign up to make our energy needs even more hostage to hostile regimes overseas. What a brilliant foreign policy! — Ed]