Former President Donald Trump stated in a Tuesday evening social media post that he is completely opposed to a China-linked, Democrat-backed electric vehicle (EV) battery components factory planned for construction in Michigan.
Gotion, a subsidiary “wholly owned and controlled” by China-based battery maker Gotion High-Tech, plans to build a major manufacturing facility in Green Charter Township, Michigan, with the help of state and federal subsidies. However, the company has numerous ties to the Chinese Communist party via its parent company and benefits from Chinese subsidies.
Trump took to Truth Social to make clear that he is “100%” against the project.
“A few weeks ago, the Chinese Electric Vehicle battery company that Michigan Democrats support, Gotion, claimed that I support its EV battery plant planned for Northern Michigan. That is not true,” Trump wrote in his post. “The Gotion plant would be very bad for the State and our Country. It would put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. I AM 100% OPPOSED! As your President, I will make America’s Auto Industry bigger and stronger than it has ever been before, PROTECT American Workers, and TERMINATE the Green New Scam.”
Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Democrats signed off on $175 million in incentives to benefit Gotion in April 2023, and the company could also claim tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill. Many locals are opposed to the project, even voting to recall several local officials who supported Gotion’s plans, and Gotion’s Vice President of North American Operations Chuck Thelen told Politico in August 23 that the CCP has no presence in the North American arm of the company.
However, Gotion’s updated Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) paperwork, filed in July, discloses that “Gotion is partially subsidized through government funding supplied by the People’s Republic of China.” Daily Caller News Foundation investigations also revealed that Gotion High-Tech employed more than 900 CCP members, including its CEO, as of 2022 and that a traveling group of CCP members established a so-called talent recruitment “work station” at Gotion’s California headquarters in 2017.
The DCNF also unearthed video footage showing Gotion High-Tech employees dressed as Red Army soldiers and pledging loyalty to the CCP while on a company retreat. A separate DCNF probe found that Gotion High-Tech established a joint venture with a State Department-flagged “Communist Chinese military company subsidiary” in 2016.
A group of Congressional Republicans urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June to essentially blacklist Gotion High-Tech and another Chinese battery company, CATL, because of alleged ties to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Thelen said later in June that the lawmakers’ allegations are “categorically false and clearly intended to deceive,” according to The Pioneer, a local news outlet.
Republican Reps. Darin LaHood of Illinois and John Moolenaar of Michigan, who represents the area where Gotion wants to build in Michigan and chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, introduced the NO GOTION Act in November 2023 to prohibit CCP-affiliated firms from cashing in on IRA tax credits. The bill would also apply to companies tied to the governments of Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress in January that there is a possibility that the CCP uses Gotion’s planned Michigan facility “to gain the kind of advantages that they want that are counter, frankly, to the interests of the United States.” Gotion also has plans to build a facility in Illinois, with Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office suggesting in September 2023 that opposition to that project is ginned up and xenophobic.
Representatives for Gotion and Gotion High-Tech did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
Featured Image Credit: U.S. Secretary of Defense
