By: Mark Glennon*
What should be among the most comment sense actions Congress could take is now before the U.S. Senate. That’s the substance of the “No Gotion” legislation, which was incorporated into the House budget resolution now pending in the Senate. The provision would exclude certain Chinese companies from eligibility for taxpayer subsidies for projects in America.
A primary target of the bill is Gotion, the Chinese company closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is building lithium battery plants in Manteno, Illinois and Green Charter Township, Michigan.
It’s difficult to imagine a government economic development scheme more foolhardy than Gotion’s. Aside from $536 million in cash subsidies Gotion is receiving from the State of Illinois, the company is eligible for $6.5 billion of good-as-cash tax credits from the federal government – all for a project that will cost just $2 billion dollars to build and employ just 2,600. That comes to an absurd $2.6 million of taxpayer subsidies per job, just for the federal tax credits.
The tax credit alone is large enough to cover each facility’s initial capital investment cost and wage bill for the first several years of production. That’s according to a report by Good Jobs First, a worker-oriented policy group in Washington, D.C.
That giveaway would go to a company long identified as an industrial espionage threat that answers to the Chinese Communist Party. As summarized by the chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, John Moolenaar (R-Michigan):
Gotion is a “wholly owned and controlled” subsidiary of Gotion High-Tech, a Chinese-based battery company. According to Gotion High-Tech’s by-laws it is required to “carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the [Chinese Communist Party].” A 2024 investigation into the company by the House Select Committee on the CCP found the company is reliant on the CCP’s use of forced labor in its supply chain. In an amended Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, Gotion admitted it is subsidized by the Chinese government.
The fate of the measure to take away Gotion’s tax credits is unknown, being subject to the reconciliation process now underway in the Senate over the pending, annual tax and spending bill. The credits were initially authorized in the falsely labeled Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which appropriated hundreds of billions of taxpayer subsidies for green energy.
Reconciliation is a huge game of horse trading, with lawmakers deeply divided on how to preserve their favorite spending priorities while living within a debt ceiling. Every bit of spending gets counted and the total must stay within a spending target. That means lawmakers must identify what they can trade off that’s of little importance to preserve dollars for what they want. Congressional Democrats are particularly keen on preserving spending social and safety net programs.
The No Gotion provision should be at the top of the list as a means to free tax dollars for other things or reduce the deficit, and the three lawmakers who could be most instrumental in making that happen are from Illinois.
They are Senators Dick Durbin, Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi.
Durbin and Duckworth would have particular influence on the matter since they represent the state where the Manteno project is located. In fact, public endorsement of the No Gotion provision would probably be sufficient to assure its passage since all Republicans in the narrowly divided Senate already support the provision.
Krishnamoorthi’s voice would also be key. He’s in the House, but is a leading candidate for Durbin’s Senate seat next year. Moreover, Krishnamoorthi is the ranking Democrat on the Select Committee on the CCP. His silence to date on Gotion has been inexcusable.
It’s not as if the three would be going it alone as Democrats if they killed the Gotion tax credits. The original No Gotion Act was sponsored by three Democrats in the House, and public pressure turned Michigan’s newly elected Democratic Senator, Elissa Slotkin, into a Gotion opponent during her campaign last year. Polls, too, show bipartisan voter opposition to the Gotion projects, locally and statewide, in Illinois and Michigan.
Finally, the Gotion projects are part of a broader, doomed chapter in government planning.
As originally announced, the plants would make batteries for electric vehicles with parts produced in Michigan and assembled in Illinois. Gotion was to be a key part of an EV production ecosystem envisioned under Illinois’ Reimagining Energy and Vehicles (REV) program.
But overwhelming public opposition and litigation has halted any construction of the Michigan plant. The entire REV program is a flop thanks mostly to inadequate EV consumer demand. Gotion opponents in Manteno believe that the Gotion plant there, as a result, is shifting from EVs to making batteries for storage of electricity from wind and solar. Gotion hasn’t confirmed that. It operates in near total secrecy.
That shift by Gotion to storage of green electricity would likely just add another layer of folly. Wind and solar projects are being cancelled all over America. At least $14 billion of clean energy projects were cancelled this year alone through May.
And it’s highly doubtful that battery storage offers a feasible solution for the unreliability of solar and wind, according to many critics. See for example this report in the MIT Technology Review, for which the headline says it all: “The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid.” Another critic wrote, based on a major study by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society, that “Current batteries cannot possibly store more than a fraction of the energy needed to keep the lights on when the wind stops blowing and the sun doesn’t shine.”
Senators Durbin, Duckworth and Rep. Krishnamoorthi, do the right thing: Speak up publicly in support of the No Gotion provision. Make it a part of the final Senate bill. Spare taxpayers from this harebrained misadventure in central planning.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Wirepoints has been following the Gotion controversy closely from the start and all pertinent articles are collected here.
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Without large subsides many businesses would not even consider Illinois. Even then they will live to regret coming to the state.
Raise your hand if you can spot three elected officials that really don’t give a flying f about Americans.
That Pic reminds me of the 3 Stooges
Durbin, Duckworth, and Raj don’t look out for US citizens in IL. They won’t go against Pritzker. This CCP company should not be allowed in IL. We don’t want it. But the plant isn’t in their neighborhood.
Quite a trio there, Wirepoints. I wouldn’t expect too much out of these three. Tammie just is not intelligent enough to analyze this project. Krish is a proven fabricator and phony. And Durbin has long ago given up any sense of integrity and has become a mouthpiece for every leftie cause no matter what the logic and truth are. It is sad to look at those three faces and think they are at the top of the Illinois political hierarchy
Think about the number of political appointees who are required to monitor the spending of this money. Until the politicians find another high paying gig for these appointees don’t look for this subsidy ro go away.
The lack of public awareness and willfully ignorance about this issue illustrates that a line has been crossed:
Many Illinois residents might have been formerly considered as childish, willfully ignorant useful idiots (voters, non-voters, non-participant in local politics except to oppose the random good-guy reformer when triggered by dogwhistle masters).
Now they must be considered as bigoted murderous sociopaths who prioritize personal short term amygdalla-tickle over their community’s actual human lives and wellbeing.
One must seek to avoid them and that which they control.
Nice article Mark. This is no-where to be found in the media. No where. This paragraph from the article is stunning. The numbers make no sense. The product makes no sense. The deal is so obvious and blatantly bad, one has to wonder – Who is getting paid out of this bad deal? Gotta be somebody. The fact that THE DICK, THE DUCK and THE MORON are not saying anything and not looking out for the interests of Illinois residents and tax payers is very telling and makes you wonder. “It’s difficult to imagine a government economic development scheme more… Read more »