Mary Barra/PHOTO: Fortune Live Media (CC)
Not to be outdone by Ford CEO Jim Farley—who we recently noted suffers from a severe case of political amnesia regarding his role in the EV mandate disaster—General Motors CEO Mary Barra has entered the chat with her own revisionist history.
Speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit this month, Barra lamented that the Biden administration’s fuel economy rules were “out of step with market realities.” She warned the audience that compliance with these aggressive standards would have forced GM to restrict gas-powered vehicle production or even close plants just to meet the regulatory math.
It is a convenient story for a CEO looking to dodge accountability. It is also a lie.
Barra was not a passive victim of the Biden administration’s regulatory overreach; She was its chief architect. In September 2022, GM didn’t just accept strict standards—they demanded them. In a “smoking gun” joint statement with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), GM explicitly recommended that the EPA establish standards “aimed at ensuring that at least 50% of new vehicles sold by 2030 are zero emitting.”
Let that sink in. Barra’s GM explicitly asked the federal government to mandate that half of their sales be electric by 2030. They gave the EPA the political cover it needed to write the very rules Barra now claims are impossible to meet.
For years, Barra ignored shareholders and the free market to chase ESG scores and applause from the Biden White House. She signaled that an “all-electric future” was not just a goal, but a guaranteed reality. Now that the market has spoken—and consumers have rejected her expensive EVs—she is trying to rewrite history to save her job.
Barra wasn’t “forced” into this corner. She painted herself into it, and now she expects shareholders to pay for the cleanup.
(Top image created via ChatGPT)
