Host Charles Payne even threw in the gratuitous, baseless dig, “If the Democrats keep the White House, we’re gonna be mandated to own” electric vehicles.
Saturday’s Cavuto Live show discussed the UAW strike expanding to 38 sites in 20 states and into its second week. One of the guests was Tom Maoli, owner of a New Jersey Ford dealer. He called the strike “catastrophic” and “disastrous.” “What the UAW is asking for is unsustainable,” he said.
Payne did not seem to buy it. He asked Maoli if the auto workers deserve “any sort of raise?" He also asked if it’s “intriguing” that the strikes began at “final assembly points, not choke points” so that if it’s not a long strike, it won’t be as disastrous as Maoli claimed.
But Maoli seemed hell bent on trashing the UAW. “You can’t get a 40% pay increase in a 10% inflationary environment, and reduce your work hours to 32 hours and get paid for 40," he said. He acknowledged, though, that "Yes, the car companies have record profits," but you had to “peel back the onion." He claimed, “Ford is on track to lose $4.5 billion in this EV insanity that Biden created, that the consumer doesn’t want.”
FACT CHECK: Electric cars are breaking sales records, CNN reported last month. Americans bought more electric vehicles in the second quarter of 2023 than in all of 2019.
Nobody challenged Maoli's claim that consumers don't want EVs.
So he continued, saying that if the UAW gets its way, “these car companies are going to go bankrupt.”
“Right, right,” Payne said. The two other panelists nodded in agreement. However, at the end of the segment, Payne admitted he supports a pay raise for the workers.
FACT CHECK: We’ve had a clean energy boom for a year thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act - which the UAW endorsed. I
Furthermore, CNN reported in January that the car industry saw “sky high profits even as sales plummeted” in 2022. The Big Three automakers “saw a profit of $32 billion through the third quarter of 2022, their largest profit since 2016. Car dealerships also reported record breaking profits through Q3.” Strong “pandemic-era pent up consumer demand” has kept profit margins high.
I’m not sure if Tom’s Ford dealership will get a boost in buyers with this attack. I doubt I’ll be shopping there.
You can see why below, from the September 25, 2023 Cavuto Live.