BIG RAPIDS, Michigan — Last fall, voters angry about plans to build an electric vehicle battery plant in their rural community in central Michigan turned their ire on the township board that supported the project, ousting five of the seven board members in a recall election.
It could have been all seven, Lori Brock, an area real estate agent who helped lead the effort, said. But two members resigned ahead of time. “They knew they were going to get recalled,” she said.
Back then, the political debate over Gotion Inc., a U.S.-based subsidiary of a Chinese company that acknowledges its association with the Communist Party of China, was parochial, playing out in Green Charter Township and surrounding areas. Now it’s playing out in the race for the White House as a fusion of two issues central to Republican messaging — the rise of China as a geopolitical adversary and the emergence of electric vehicles — in a critical battleground state.
“They’re moving up the food chain, and it’s starting from the grassroots level,” Michigan GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra said, referring to the activists who rallied to oust local officeholders.
Former President Donald Trump declared himself “100% OPPOSED” to Gotion in a social media post last month, writing that the company “would put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.” More recently, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, traveled here last week to deliver a campaign speech on Brock’s horse farm.
Vance’s visit was designed to raise awareness, a source familiar with the planning said.
In his speech, Vance attempted to link the project to Vice President Kamala Harris, noting how the Democratic presidential nominee cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which makes green energy companies like Gotion eligible for tax credits. A Gotion official told Crain’s Detroit Business last year that the company, “at this time,” was not pursuing the tax credits.
“I think the most important thing is we have to stop paying Chinese manufacturers to manufacture, whether it’s here or overseas,” Vance said in a meeting with reporters after the speech last week. “We want to build an American manufacturing industry and an American middle class. If we want to pursue these policies, let’s do them for Americans and American businesses.”
While the debate over Gotion has lately broken largely along party lines, with Republicans from Trump on down leading the opposition, the politics behind the project are more nuanced.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, announced plans for the EV battery plant in October 2022, weeks before she won a second term in a landslide. Whitmer said the California-based Gotion would invest nearly $2.4 billion in the plant and create 2,350 jobs.
The state, through an economic development fund that Whitmer noted was created with Republican support, pledged $175 million in grants and tax incentives worth $540 million. At the time, local GOP officeholders were among those eager to support the deal.
The project quickly became a flashpoint. Tudor Dixon, Whitmer’s Republican rival that year, raised the alarm about taxpayer money being spent on a company with ties to China. Anti-China rhetoric has only escalated in political campaigns since then. In Michigan, suspicions about a factory that makes battery components for electric vehicles also land hard, given the state’s rich history of and heavy reliance on the manufacturing of combustion-engine cars.
There is also skepticism about the job and economic predictions, as well as an acute not-in-my-backyard sentiment in a rural county with a population of roughly 40,000.
“I feel like it’s just going to be too much, too fast,” said Jeff Tyson, a local taxidermist who attended Vance’s event last week. “And we’re going to see, just like [they] say — the rivers, the lakes, the farmlands — everything disappear. … I want to see things get better around here. I’d like to see more of this type of thing, just not a China-owned company coming in.”
In its articles of association, Gotion Inc.’s parent company, Gotion High-tech Co. Ltd., pledges to “set up a Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.” And a July amendment to a federal Foreign Agents Registration Act disclosure filed on Gotion Inc.’s behalf noted that the company is “partially subsidized through government funding supplied by the People’s Republic of China.”
In his speech, Vance alluded to concerns raised at a congressional hearing on China last January by Leon Panetta, a Democrat who served as CIA director and defense secretary under President Barack Obama. Responding to a question from Rep. John Mooelnaar, R-Mich, who asked about the possibility of Chinese espionage at the Michigan plant, Panetta said he didn’t “think there’s any question that they’re going to take advantage of that situation.”
Brock, who hosted Vance at her horse farm near the planned Gotion site, said she was most worried about empowering a country that has emerged as an adversary.
“Why in this world would we do that and put our enemy on our ground?” Brock asked. “We can’t buy land in China. Why are they allowing them to come here? And why are we buying it with our tax dollars? Then we’re the ones that are left [without] money to support the schools.”
Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s vice president for North American operations, wrote in an email to NBC News that he would not comment “on any political situation” involving the Michigan project. He did not respond to subsequent questions about plans for the Big Rapids-area plant.
Democrats see the dispute as a hyperlocal issue that won’t factor decisively into the presidential race or a competitive battle for an open U.S. Senate seat. Mecosta County, which includes the Gotion site, favored Trump over President Joe Biden by 28 percentage points in 2020. Dixon, despite campaigning on Gotion, beat Whitmer by a smaller margin there two years later.
“Michigan Democrats have been rebuilding an economy that Trump left in shambles as president,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes said in a statement. “Since then, thanks to strong leadership from the Biden-Harris administration and Governor Whitmer, we are bringing thousands of American jobs back home from overseas and growing our economy at record rates. Trump was a disaster for Michigan jobs, plain and simple, and we will not go back as we work to build a brighter future for all Michiganders.”
Hoekstra, the state GOP chair, believes Gotion is “a huge motivating factor” for voters.
“Michigan taxpayers are wondering why are we funding Chinese companies — Chinese automobile interests — here in the state of Michigan, which very much could devastate our automobile industry,” Hoekstra said. “If we’re investing billions of dollars in Michigan, there are lots of U.S. companies that would jump at the chance of getting billions of dollars to create jobs.”
The issue has become a tension point in the Senate race between Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin and Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman. Republicans, playing into criticism that the Gotion dealings lacked transparency, have accused Slotkin of endorsing nondisclosure agreements involving the deal. The Detroit News reported last year that a Slotkin aide signed an NDA to view details after the project was announced publicly. Her campaign has said that Slotkin never personally signed an NDA related to Gotion.
Slotkin has expressed reservations about the Gotion plans and in March introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at enhancing federal oversight of major U.S. real estate purchases by companies with ties to adversarial countries, including China and Russia.
Rogers, who has been campaigning heavily on the issue, said in an interview that the rosy employment and economic impact projections deserve more scrutiny. Some of 2,300-plus promised jobs would likely be temporary construction jobs, he asserted. Others would likely be hired away from smaller businesses that will struggle to match what Gotion offers.
“There were people who had pixie dust blown in their face,” Rogers said. “Folks were saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, now. I’ve been paying taxes for the 50 years I’ve been here, and they’re coming in trying to poach my employees at a higher wage rate because the government gave them money.’ Which is their money. You can see these second- and third-order effects of this.”
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