Mississippi Republicans Try To Halt Sales Of Electric Cars

Republicans in Mississippi passed a law this week that will severely limit the availability of electric vehicles for sale in the state. The legislation mandates that electric car manufacturers will have to franchise out their dealerships in the state - they can't run them through the company - which will benefit the already super-wealthy dealership owners and hurt the chances of new electric car dealerships from popping up. For a Party that loves to say they love capitalism, they sure are hypocrites with their legislation. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Republicans in the state of Mississippi voted this week, and Republican Governor Tate Reeve signed into law a bill that will make it far more difficult for anyone in the state of Mississippi to purchase an electric vehicle. The legislation specifically says that no electric car manufacturer can open up a dealership in the state of Mississippi. Now, they currently do have one Tesla dealership in the entire state of Mississippi. That one is not touched. It's grandfathered in that one dealership for the entire state can stand. But Tesla Rivian, any other all electric manufacturer, you cannot open a dealership in our state because you as car companies operate your own dealerships. And while we just can't have that, so if you want to open a dealership in our state, you have to franchise it. Basically, you have to give the rights to sell those vehicles to somebody else in the state of Mississippi.

Now, I don't know how familiar everybody watching this is with the way car dealerships tend to work down here in the south, but in many areas of the state, yeah, you'll have lots of car dealerships, you may have dozens of car dealerships, but when you look behind the fine print, you'll find that most of them are owned by one or two different people in these cities. And typically in the cities where this happens, those happen to be the richest people in the city. I know because that's exactly how my city is. We've got a whole strip of the city called Carr City, dozens of dealerships, three or four owners between all of them, and that's what Mississippi wants to protect. This isn't about, as Governor Tate Reeve said, small businesses and communities. This is about protecting the ultra wealthy in the state of Mississippi so that they don't lose money to a different car dealership moving in on their territory.

That's what this is about. This is literally the opposite of capitalism. This is essentially the state stepping in and promoting monopolistic behavior among two or three millionaires so that another company can't come in and sell their own cars. You have to give those rights to these other already rich people who can afford to franchise your brand. Now keep in mind this does not change the price of the cars or, or what consumers would be paying for the cars. It just changes Who's gonna get the bulk of the profits and the bulk of those profits will now go to already wealthy Mississippi car dealerships as opposed to the already wealthy Tesla and Rivian companies.

And trust me, I have no love for Tesla whatsoever, but this bill, there is no way in hell this is going to stand up in court. This absolutely demolishes free market competition in the state of Mississippi. And again, it's a massive handout to the probably very well politically connected car dealership owners in Mississippi. And they're gonna do what they can to protect their profits, which may also mean gonna be a lot harder to buy an electric vehicle if you live in the state of Mississippi.