By: Mark Glennon*
Last week, the United Auto Workers accused Stellantis of “putting the breaks” on widely celebrated plans for a major project in Belvidere Illinois. And as reported Monday, the UAW is now preparing to file grievances and potentially strike over the matter. That’s the latest on what has been a very fishy story from the start. Answers from Gov. JB Pritzker are long overdue.
Almost ten months ago, Pritzker announced to much fanfare that the Stellantis facility in Belvidere, idled with layoffs just before the previous Christmas, would be reopened to produce electric and mid-sized trucks. Belvidere, we were told, also would get a new battery plant and a regional parts distribution hub. “This will be thousands of jobs, billions in investment, and a huge win for Illinois,” Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement last October. Crain’s reported Friday that Stellantis was expected to invest some $5 billion in Belvidere and headcount should be 4,000 to 5,000 by 2028.
But we were suspicious even then about the project, which was likely to exceed half a billion dollars, as Crain’s reported. “Dare we ask how much the new Stellantis deal will cost taxpayers and cannibalize other employment centers?” our headline read last year.
We repeated that suspicion in March after Pres. Joe Biden added to bragging about the plant in his State of the Union Address.
As of last week, we still had no basic information about the deal and cost to taxpayers, yet Pritzker and the state continued bragging about the project. In the five-year economic plan released last week, they said it was Illinois’ Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois Act (REV Illinois) and the special “closing fund” given to Priztker to attract new projects that allowed Illinois to attract Stellantis into the project. However, no REV agreement was posted on the state’s site where those things go.
So I emailed both Pritzker’s office and Stellantis over the weekend, asking for an explanation. No response, as expected.
Then came the news Monday about the potential strike over inaction on the project.
One possibility, suggested by a knowledgeable observer near Belvidere, is that Stellantis is stalling the project to shake down Pritzker for more money. I mean, nobody would suspect that Pritzker would have rushed out announcement of the deal before it was sealed so he’d have an electric vehicle success to boast about, would they? Whatever the answers are to what’s really going on, we should have them.
Would it be asking too terribly much of our regular media to ask what the heck is going on?
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
union better wise up and vote for TRUMP. the dems will take away their jobs and fill them with illegals.
no one with half a brain is going to buy an electric truck. so will pritzker fly on an electric airplane? of course not. pritzker is illinois’ BIGGEST nightmare. we need a new governor or none at all.
EV’a will never fly, float, or be purchased except by the woke government pushing them.
This is not good news about Stellantis.
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/stellantis-starting-come-apart-ceo-134500519.html
I said before that I was recently in the market for a new vehicle. I was seriously, very seriously considering a Stellantis vehicle but it was priced thousands upon thousands higher, (in a similar trim) than it was in 2018. The lot at the time was still full of the cars, and was empty on a weekend when I visited to test drive. Little to no discount on the Stellantis vehicle off MSRP. I asked myself, how can these people be making any money if they aren’t selling any cars? I consulted a number of people about my purchase and… Read more »
UAW = U Ain’t Workin’ Take a bow Shawn Fain, Joe Biden, and KamAla Harris for ruining jobs for the the rank and file.
I’m sure it will be Ok. After all would toilets lie to you geniuses? Why wouldn’t Stellantis want to do business in Illinois? High taxes. High regulations, Crazy unions that own the ruling democrats. Where else can you go in the midwest to get that? It’s not like once the taxpayer money used to bribe them to stay runs out, they would just leave. Just curious, are any of you economic scholars at all concerned about why the state and federal governments need to bribe them to stay in Illinois? If Illinois and the EV products are so good, there… Read more »
Looks like lies are slowly catching up to all the demonrats. JB is some of of the worst of them.
Typical Pritzker move. Over promise and under deliver, and dare the Illinois media to call him out on it. He owns the media, as a result of two campaigns where he bought more airtime than anyone. Plus he funded other campaigns that also bought airtime. The media companies are essentially bankrupt, and they’ll gladly accept the life preserver JB threw them.
Another company that has trouble competing in the free market thanks to Unions.
In common with the other two US automakers, Stellantis has over six months of cars and trucks unsold on their lots right now. There are still ‘new’ 2023 units making rust outlines in the pavement like a battery powered bus. Buyouts are flying around Stellantis plants everywhere as the automaker tries to cut its losses. If the UAW wants to sit for a while, fine. The dealers that don’t go bankrupt will gladly work off that excess inventory. There was zero chance of Belvedere reopening. Stellantis has no capital for projects like idiotic electric cars and trucks that no one… Read more »
Pritzker had such high hopes of garnering the #1 or #2 slot in the Presidential elections and, as we have seen, he built a mountain of headlines, at taxpayer expense, for him to tout himself to the public to further his goals. Unfortunately for Pritzker his time is running out because all of his grandiose so called accomplishments are starting to unravel and he didn’t get his coveted nod. Pritzker will now be sent to the back of the classroom while our media focuses on what a great candidate Harris is. Meanwhile the Illinois taxpayers are left with the now… Read more »
To be fair to Stellantis they are stating that the deadlines have been pushed back, not cancelled. The factory was due to re-open in 2027 and a parts distribution center in 2025. But I have to believe with all that’s going on at Stellantis, that original plan will not be carried out as intended.
“Would it be asking too terribly much of our regular media to ask what the heck is going on?”
Bwahahahahahahahahaha <sniff>
Bwahahahahahahahaha…
Never believed it when they announced it. This plant will not reopen. Face it Belvedere, Illinois and UAW. after all the pay increases your going to see more plants shut down, the big 3 are going to keep the profit level for themselves and let the workers go. Corporations care about one thing profits, the cost of vehicles have driven half the country out of the new car market, lending institutions have driven another 25 % out of new car purchases. If only about 25 % of the citizens are buying new vehicles good luck keeping plants open!
I don’t blame corporations for making profits. I work for a greedy corporation that makes profits and when the company stops being profitable, I will lose my job. There are several well accepted reasons cars are so expensive and price gouging is not part of the equation. The first more longer term reason is that the sedan and economy market has collapsed and the SUV market is the car market now. SUVs cost more money to build. Secondly, buyers are increasingly rejecting base level models, and opt for higher level and hence more expensive trims. These market forces have been… Read more »
I don’t disagree with the points made but Stellantis is an outlier in that they don’t seem to participate care about the US market – hard to understand but given their product profile and pricing I can’t look at it any way else.
Those were my thoughts as well when I found out the automakers were caving in to the UAW. The UAW gets higher pay and more benefits, but at the expense of the consumer. Now, because new car prices are so high, many consumers are balking at buying new cars. That means layoffs for some UAW workers. If you’re one of the workers that dodges a layoff, congrats; you won. For the others, that’s collateral damage, I guess.
And the Dems went nuts about Scott Walker’s Foxconn investment! Let’s see the hypocrisy snowball!!
Trump called it the 8th wonder of the world and was at the groundbreaking. Republicans like industrial policy through government incentives just like the democrats, but virtually no government money was spent on Foxconn as they didn’t meet any of the criteria for those incentives.
Here is part of the problem. Stellantis received over $325M in incentives from the feds. This was to be used for producing EV’s and batteries to promote the Green Agenda. If they do not use the money for EV’s and build hybrids instead will they have to give the money back? We have no clue on how much the state gave in incentives for the same agenda. What if they decided to build gas autos which are more reliable and profitable? EV’s cost way to much for the average consumer and have more problems overall including finding charging stations. https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/04/business/electric-cars-have-more-problems-but-not-because-theyre-electric/index.html… Read more »
first, no one can trust pritzker.
The over arching issue is sales for Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram vehicles are way down, due to ending of certain models, along with having over priced their vehicles since Stellantis was formed, and having the WORST quality in the marketplace, by far. The Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram market share has dropped by a lot. Stellantis’ most recent quarterly report noted sales were down about 23%, profit was down by 50%. Their franchise car dealers, in general, have about 6 months of inventory already on their lots to sell. Now, their dealers are asking for Stellantis to put incentives to consumers to help sell these cars. These… Read more »
no one is going to buy an electric truck.
Stellantis’s corporate screw ups will be case studied in business school for generations to come. a disastrous merger of several mutlinationals headquartered in Europe. They decided that their down-market vehicles were just too down-market, and like every good Democrat, they believed that the power of PR and branding, aka ‘comms’ would magically transform their down-market cars into luxury vehicles. They jacked up the price of every base model, by tens of thousand and then produced mostly luxury and higher trim models. Of course, this didn’t work. Then they invested heavily in the EV market at a time when few want… Read more »
Here are the 10 most American 2024 vehicles by manufacturer: Tesla has 3, Honda has 3, Toyota/Lexus has 2, Jeep has 1, and VW has 1. The good news is 8 of those vehicles are assembled in states Trump carried in 2020 and 2016. Two are assembled in states carried by Biden and Clinton.
Spot on Debtsor. I didn’t leave Chrysler; they left me. I leased the 300 for years until 2019 when they stopped making them. They wouldn’t even lease me one the final year of production. The dealership said I had to buy it! I wasn’t about to cut a 30K cheque. I’m driving Fords now.
The UAW president really slammed Stellantis CEO in the video on that CNBC piece: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/16/uaw-president-slams-stellantis-ceo.html
I just read that article, the UAW prez is a goof. He says sales are down, they’re losing money but at the same time they are price gouging? That’s not how things are supposed to work! The price gouging is just a talking point with the Democrat part these days. Stellantis’s market, the base model vehicles, are not very profitable. The profit comes from charging $$$ for higher trim levels: muscle cars for 20 year olds, minivans for families, jeeps. Stellantis made an bone headed business decision to raise the price on base models, but manufacture mostly higher trim models,… Read more »
A $110,000 Jeep is price gouging. That price point explains the sales down, prices up strategy that Stellantis has been pursuing. A Jeep, even a nice Jeep, is not an Escalade, no matter how they try to sell it as such.
Price gouging implies a shortage of the product and the high price reflects a purchase under duress. My understanding is that the Grand Wagoners are sitting on lots like paperweights. There are an oversupply of them. They are simply pricing the product too high and that’s a bad business decision.
It is difficult to claim price gouging when the Wagoneers and Grand Wagoneers are not selling. The manufacturers and dealers are simply asking too much, and consumers are responding by not buying. My kids just rented a Wagoneer while on vacation and were incredibly disappointed – rough ride and a vibe of not being well made. A model cannot survive on fleet or rental sales. I was surprised when Pritzker made the announcement ounement and commitment of state funds. Stellantis – not an American manufacturer in mindset – is the last automaker one should invest in. Their dealer network wants… Read more »
In my mind Shawn Fain is a real piece of work. Having said that, he was very aggressive and canny in the recent negotiations with the Big 3 and got basically everything the UAW wanted. He also got the VW plant to vote for unionization but I believe every other VW plant in the world is already unionized so VW probably didn’t care much. He did fail at unionizing Mercedes Benz in Alabama so we’ll see where his future goes in the UAW as the world wide automobile industry is being shaken up by EV’s and China. Some in the… Read more »
It would be political suicide for any politician to allow in cheap Chinese imported vehicles. There will be sky high tarriffs on them if they ever even get on the ship. We saw what happened in the 70’s with japanese vehicles. No one will ever allow that repeat with China.
Agreed, but Walz would probably do it if he could. I think the concerns about his affinity for the CCP are legit.
Walz is to China as Bernie is to the USSR.
Both of them are authoritarian leaning loons.
many good points here but…definitely republican leaning..try saying something encouraging please, instead of all this negativity.
Neither the democrats or republicans will make it easy for Chinese cars to be imported into the U.S. I don’t think China will be able to back door the cars through Mexico either. But you and Debtstor are overlooking the fact that Trump has welcomed the Chinese to build cars in the U.S. and they probably will begin to do so in the next few years. That’s what the Japanese and Koreans have done, with great success.
Fain is in a pickle. Stellantis management has allowed so much inventory to accumulate a strike would be in a sense welcomed. Not much leverage. He had a certain amount of leverage because for the first time in decades he is not by all appearances corrupt. The honeymoon only lasts so long..
Keep digging. Good story.