By: Mark Glennon
Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday accused presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and the current Democratic administration of “helping China destroy and replace our auto industry from the inside out” with subsidized electric vehicle battery plants being built by Gotion. Coverage is appearing in much of the media including the New York Times and Fox.
Donald Trump announced last week that he is 100% opposed to Gotion’s project. Both Vance and Trump were referencing the Michigan Gotion plant, but their opposition clearly extends to the Illinois plant as well. The Illinois factory is planned to assemble parts made at the similarly sized Michigan plant into finished EV batteries.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Michigan, Vance said Harris’ “tie-breaking vote that she cast to send inflation through the roof,” referring to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, made “Chinese companies like Gotion eligible for millions of your taxpayer dollars.” Under that law, Gotion is eligible for $7.5 billion of federal tax credits for its factory now under construction in Manteno, Illinois, as well as $536 million from the State of Illinois.
“Even some of the folks in Obama’s administration said that the Gotion factory plant is a threat to America’s national security,” Vance said. “But Kamala Harris not only wants to allow the Chinese Communist Party to build factories on American soil, she wants to pay them to do it with our tax money.”
The New York Times article painted Vance’s comments as a political move to inflame anti-Chinese sentiment, its headline being, “To Lure Michigan Voters, Trump Campaign Stokes China Fears.” But the article does not mention Vance’s reference to some in the Obama Administration who see Gotion’s plans as a threat to America’s national security.
Leon Panetta, CIA Director and Defense Secretary under Obama, earlier warned against Chinese espionage through Gotion, saying, I don’t think there’s any question that they’re going to take advantage of that situation…. That’s just the way they operate. They’ll establish a manufacturing unit, they’ll establish whatever they can, and then they will use that for their own intelligence purposes. They will use that for their own economic purposes.”
And the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center during the Obama Administration earlier testified that it’s “100% certain” that some of the people who come from China to work on Gotion projects will spy for the Chinese Communist Party.
Gotion also recently amended its Foreign Agents Registration Act statement to say that it is partly subsidized by the Chinese government.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints
Wirepoints is following the Gotion controversy closely and all pertinent articles are collected here.
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.
Another of Pritzker’s “Headline Making Events” starts to unravel after the big convention. Pritzker had big plans for himself to garner a Presidential nod and generated big headlines to parade about at the convention. Unfortunately for Pritzker his plans bore no fruit and even more unfortunate for the Illinois taxpayers seeking property tax relief are instead given the burdens of supporting this morass.
There’s really no defense of allowing Gotion to move forward, much less offering them egregious subsidies, so you can expect the standard Democrat tactic. Silence. The mainstream media will fall in line pretty quickly.
Why subsize anything? If EV or battery making is so profitable and important to the economy then let the company hire an American firm to make the batteries here and give a good old American the incentives by handing him or her a key to the city but no tax rebates, no NON-American owned and no state or federal tax dollars now or later promised or given. To no one. If EV’s are so great let the GUV invest his own money in this because he LOVES this state.
The issue that matters is this: should oligarch Governors be allowed to circumvent State Law to ram through local projects which drain groundwater and pollute local environment, harming local property values…without so much as a by-your-leave?
Bingo!
Illinois:
Land of LincolnProud Member of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party)Sadly, under current elected leadership it seems to be heading this way.