Forbes Piece: Manchin Slams Treasury For Effort To End-Run Around Congress

[Note: This story was also published at Forbes.com]

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, slammed the Treasury Department Monday for what he says is an attempt to circumvent the “clear purpose” of the Inflation Reduction Act’s language requiring domestic content in electric vehicle battery components.

In previous remarks on April 20, Manchin described the concept behind the language thusly: “The EV tax credits for cars, my personal belief is we didn’t need any. But with that being said, I said if we’re going to do it, let’s get something for it. And changing to electric [vehicles] when we had dependence on a foreign supply chain, mostly China — that doesn’t make any sense. So, we put this together saying $3,750 would come if you secured and sourced and do the processing in North America or countries with a free trade agreement. And then the other $3,750 would be for manufacturing the battery in North America.”

An End-Run In The Making

Upon reviewing its new rulemaking, Sen. Manchin now believes the Treasury department is not making a good faith effort to interpret the law as it was written.

“Regrettably, it appears that the Treasury has seriously misconstrued the plain language and clear purpose of the critical minerals and battery component requirements in subsection (e),” Manchin said Monday in written comments. “Either that or the Treasury thinks it has a better approach than the one enacted by Congress and it is using its subsection (e)(3) rulemaking authority to substitute its approach for the one that Congress enacted into law. But the Treasury has no such power.”

Manchin further points out that “Congress rewrote section 30D to promote reliable critical mineral and battery manufacturing supply chains needed to supply the growing demand for electric vehicles,” one of the stated objectives of President Joe Biden himself, who promised in July 2021 to mount a “whole of government approach” to achieve that specific goal. In submitting these written comments, Sen. Manchin essentially accuses Treasury officials of ignoring the President’s commitment and pursuing their own, separate agenda.