Chevrolet

The "Government Motors" Legacy

No event shapes how GM is perceived politically more than its 2008 to 2009 federal rescue. The Bush administration announced plans to assist the auto industry on December 19, 2008, and the Obama administration expanded the rescue in 2009, providing a $30.1 billion loan as GM went through bankruptcy.[2] In all, the Treasury put $49.5 billion into GM and received about a 61 percent stake in the company, and critics dubbed it "Government Motors."[2][3] The Treasury sold its last GM shares on December 9, 2013,[2] and the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) later put the final loss to taxpayers at $11.2 billion.[4] Defenders of the rescue point to the Center for Automotive Research, which estimated that nearly 1.9 million jobs would have been lost in 2009 and 2010 had GM gone out of business.[3] More than fifteen years later, the bailout remains the reference point many readers reach for first when they think about GM and Washington.

Where the Political Money Goes

General Motors has had a corporate PAC registered with the FEC since April 1977, funded by individual contributions.[5] In December 2024, GM donated $1 million, along with a fleet of vehicles, to President-elect Donald Trump's inaugural fund, as did Ford; Toyota gave $1 million as well. Barra had said that GM and the incoming administration were "goal-aligned" on wanting a strong economy and a strong manufacturing base.[6] GM spreads its political giving across both parties: in the 2024 cycle its PAC gave $120,000 each to the Democratic and Republican House and Senate campaign committees.[1] GM is also one of the heaviest federal lobbyists in the country, an activity driven by its exposure to fuel-economy standards, EV incentives, tariffs, and trade rules. It reported $14.23 million in federal lobbying in 2024, ranking 17th of more than 9,200 organizations,[1] and about $20 million in 2025.[7] GM reported spending nearly $11.4 million on federal lobbying in the first quarter of 2026, a record quarter for the company that surpassed its own roughly $8.2 million record set in early 2025; only three trade associations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, and the pharmaceutical industry group PhRMA, spent more that quarter.[8]

The DEI Language Change

In early 2025, General Motors quietly removed references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from its annual report to investors.[9][10] The previous year's report had devoted three paragraphs to a section that began, "At GM, we are committed to fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion"; the new report did not mention "diversity" once.[9] In its place, the company pledged to "foster an inclusive work environment in which all employees can perform at their best."[10] An NPR analysis identified GM as one of at least a dozen large companies that deleted or softened DEI language in their annual reports in that period, following more public rollbacks by Walmart, Target, Amazon, Meta, Ford, and others.[9]

GM did not announce the change, and the company did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.[9] Observers linked the shift to GM's federal contracts, including GM Defense's 10-year State Department agreement, worth up to $300 million, to produce armored vehicles.[10][11] Unlike Ford, GM did not issue a memo or frame the shift as a values decision; the signal was sent through what disappeared from a regulatory filing.

The EV Reversal and the Newsom Fight

In August 2021, GM joined Ford and Stellantis in a joint statement backing an aspiration of 40 to 50 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030, issued alongside a non-binding Biden executive order at a White House event; GM had earlier announced an aspiration to offer only all-electric and fuel-cell vehicles by 2035.[12] That posture changed sharply as EV sales plateaued and federal policy turned. After Trump took office in 2025, GM spent about $20 million on lobbying that year, supported a bill aimed at the regulations underpinning the EV transition, and emailed thousands of its white-collar employees urging them to ask their senators to end California's waiver to set its own vehicle emission rules.[7] GM has long opposed California's stricter standards in favor of one national standard.[7] The waiver was revoked in June 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated fines for missing federal fuel-economy standards, and the federal EV tax credit ended; GM reported about $7 billion in EV-related losses in 2025.[7][13] California Governor Gavin Newsom accused the company and its CEO by name: "GM sold us out. Mary Barra sold us out," he said in September 2025, adding that "GM led that effort."[13] GM has said it is not walking away from its vision of a zero-emissions future.[7]

This places GM, and therefore Chevrolet's product lineup, at the center of one of the most partisan-coded policy fights in the country, with the company landing on the side of fewer mandates and more flexibility.

A Detail Worth Knowing

The same General Motors that dropped the word "diversity" from its 2024 annual report still used that report to tout its "diverse EV lineup."[9] And GM Defense, the quiet government-contracting arm most people never associate with the Chevy badge, builds an armored SUV called the Suburban Shield for the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service.[14] It is based on GM's full-size truck and SUV architecture but rides on a new, unique body-on-frame chassis, with armor built in during manufacturing rather than added after the fact, putting a militarized cousin of a familiar Chevrolet body style into the federal motor pool.[11][14]

Corrections

Correction, September 23, 2026: An earlier version of this profile quoted GM's annual report with wording we could not find in the filing, gave federal bailout figures without a source, and described a jobs estimate in terms its source did not support. The quote was removed, the bailout figures are now sourced, and the jobs figure now matches its source. Two dead links were replaced. These corrections did not change the profile's rating.

Footnotes

[1] OpenSecrets, General Motors Profile: Summary, 2024 cycle, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/general-motors/summary?id=D000000155&topnumcycle=2024

[2] U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Public Affairs, "GM Timeline." https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/archive-documents/GM-Timeline.pdf

[3] The Associated Press (via CNBC), "Government sells the last of its GM stake: Treasury," December 9, 2013. https://www.cnbc.com/2013/12/09/government-sells-the-last-of-its-gm-stake-treasury.html

[4] Reuters (via CNBC), "US government says it lost $11.2B on GM bailout," April 30, 2014. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/30/us-government-says-it-lost-112b-on-gm-bailout.html

[5] Federal Election Commission, General Motors Company Political Action Committee (GM PAC), C00076810, committee overview, accessed September 23, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00076810/

[6] Jennifer Mossalgue, Electrek, "Ford, General Motors, and Toyota donate $1 million each to Trump," December 26, 2024. https://electrek.co/2024/12/26/ford-general-motors-and-toyota-donate-1-million-each-to-trump/

[7] Jim Giles, Trellis, "Why General Motors lobbied against its own EV goals," April 1, 2026 (updated April 7, 2026). https://trellis.net/article/general-motors-electric-vehicles-lobbying/

[8] Taylor Giorno, NOTUS (now The Washington Sun), "General Motors Posts Record Lobbying Spending in Early 2026," April 21, 2026. https://www.washingtonsun.com/money/general-motors-lobbying-spending-tariffs-autonomous-vehicles

[9] Maria Aspan, NPR, "Exclusive: GM, Pepsi, Disney, others scrub some DEI references from investor reports," February 7, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5288947/trump-dei-disney-pepsi-diversity

[10] James Darley, Sustainability Magazine, "Has General Motors Taken a Subtle Step Back from DEI?," February 17, 2025. https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/has-general-motors-taken-a-subtle-step-back-from-dei

[11] GM Defense, "GM Defense wins State Department contract for armored SUVs," November 30, 2023. https://pressroom.gm.com/gmbx/us/en/pressroom/home/news.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/2023/nov/1130-gmdefense.html

[12] Michael Wayland, CNBC, "Biden pushes for electric vehicles to make up half of U.S. auto sales by 2030," August 5, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/05/biden-pushes-for-evs-to-make-up-40percent-or-more-of-us-auto-sales-by-2030.html

[13] Eric Revell, Fox Business, "Newsom says GM's Mary Barra 'sold us out' on electric vehicle policies and federal subsidies," September 26, 2025. https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/newsom-says-gms-mary-barra-sold-us-out-electric-vehicle-policies-federal-subsidies

[14] GM Defense (PR Newswire), "GM Defense to provide Suburban Shield armored vehicles to Qatar Armed Forces," January 7, 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gm-defense-to-provide-suburban-shield-armored-vehicles-to-qatar-armed-forces-302343530.html