Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously said he supports raising gasoline prices for consumers, arguing that it would shift the market toward electric vehicles.
In media appearances and at least one speech going back to 2003, Kennedy argued that the “real price” of gasoline would rise to as much as $22 a gallon by eliminating subsidies to oil companies and making them pay for certain costs associated with oil production.
“The first thing we need to do as a country – even more important than our moon mission – is get off foreign oil at all costs. If we had a real market, we would be spending $5.2 trillion a year subsidizing the carbon industries. And that doesn’t include the $8 trillion we’ve spent on wars to protect our oil pipelines,” Kennedy said. During the interview last year.
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he supports raising gasoline prices to shift the market to electric vehicles. (Getty Images)
“If these companies were forced to internalize these costs, gasoline would go back to where it was supposed to be — about $22 a gallon — and we would use American initiative and industrial talent to come up with other workarounds,” he added.
Kennedy made a similar claim. During a speech in 2016 Speaking to an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, he said that if oil companies were “forced” to internalize the costs associated with the oil industry’s impacts on neighbors, such as health care costs, crop damage, acid rain damage and other pollution costs, this would in turn be reflected in the price of oil.
“Paying $12 at the pump will send the right signal to the market, and the market will say we need an alternative to gasoline-powered cars, because every American will say, ‘Well, it costs about 0.3 cents per mile to drive an electric car, but if I buy a gasoline-powered car it costs about $4 per mile,'” he said.
“We’re going to move very quickly, increase the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries and provide incentives for all those looking at different battery systems.”
He went on to argue that the federal government should create an “ecosystem” that incentivizes the most efficient technologies available and “penalizes the inefficiencies of oil and coal.”
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, DC on May 24, 2024. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Kennedy as well 2014 Huffington Post article “If the oil industry had to pay the true cost of bringing their product to market, gasoline at the pump would cost more than $12 a gallon.”
“Most Americans will rush to buy an electric car,” he wrote. “With low-cost disruptive technologies like cheap, fast and efficient electric cars and solar and wind technologies poised to displace Big Oil, the electric car industry is using its influence with the Republican Party to permanently entrench itself in our economy while subverting our sacred faith in science, American democracy, free-market capitalism, and an ethical God.”
Kennedy Appeared on CNN in 2003 He also argued that reducing subsidies to oil companies to a level where consumers would pay more at the pump would force a market response.
“I’m a bigger advocate of free market capitalism and I don’t think the government should be telling people what to buy or what to build in Detroit. The problem is that this distorts the free market,” he said. “We give the oil industry $6 billion to $15 billion a year in direct subsidies that allow big oil companies to artificially drive down the price of gasoline to $1.89 a gallon, where it is today.”
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. addresses attendees at a campaign rally at Brazos Hall on May 13, 2024 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“If we paid the real price for gasoline, we’d be paying $5 a gallon, the same as Europe and other countries are paying. Then Americans would be screaming at Detroit to give us cars that got 40 miles to the gallon, and Detroit would give us SUVs that got 40 miles to the gallon.”
Asked why automakers didn’t build more electric cars then, given the billions of dollars they could make by enticing consumers frustrated by gasoline prices, Kennedy said there was no demand for them because gas prices were “still relatively low,” averaging just under $2 a pop.
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“If gas prices go above $2.50 a gallon, within a couple of years they’ll be building SUVs that get 40 mpg and we’ll be buying them. The problem is that huge subsidies to the oil industry are distorting the free market,” he said.
“Kennedy believes that the transition to clean energy should not come at the expense of those who can least afford it,” his campaign told Fox News Digital.
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