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Gotion Inc., a U.S. subsidiary of China's Gotion High-tech Co. Ltd., wants to operate electric vehicle battery plants in the Village of Manteno, Illinois and Green Charter Township, Michigan. Gotion plans to manufacture battery cells in Michigan and ship them to Manteno for assembly into battery packs. But after initially winning approvals and the backing of the governors involved, Gotion is now trying to fend off local residents determined to stop both facilities. The Illinois facility has been gearing up to begin operations, but the Trump campaign has recently made the proposed factory in Michigan an issue, and Democrats there, who once rallied to the Chinese company's defense, are now starting to back away.
The objections are valid. For many reasons, neither plant should be permitted.
Last September, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that Gotion had decided to build a $2 billion plant in his state to manufacture lithium batteries for EVs. The company had been awarded more than $500 million in tax credits. Pritzker said the facility would create 2,600 jobs.
Although the governor seems to have overstated the Chinese company's plans for Illinois, local residents are worried. "The Chinese-controlled Gotion plant is a threat to our community," Amanda Piker, a Manteno resident and founding member of Concerned Citizens of Manteno, told me. "If the plan is fully developed, it will add thousands more people to our town of 9,000 and create stresses on our schools, housing, and infrastructure. The deal was made behind closed doors with no community input."
Opposition in both Michigan and Illinois has also focused on substantial subsidies Gotion has obtained. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance traveled to Michigan this month to back residents trying to block the facility. "I think the most important thing is we have to stop paying Chinese manufacturers to manufacture, whether it's here or overseas," the Republican vice presidential candidate said.
"Only someone who hates America and taxpayers would give Chinese Communist Party-backed Gotion a red cent, let alone a $536 million tax subsidy from Illinois and potentially $7 billion more from federal taxpayers," said Jeanne Ives, a former Illinois state representative and leading critic of the Manteno facility, in emailed comments. "President Biden and Governor Pritzker are forcing taxpayers to subsidize our enemy for their Green New Deal fantasies."
Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman running for the Senate in Michigan, points out that tax dollars going to Gotion enable the Chinese company to poach employees from local businesses. Rogers's opponent, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, is now expressing concerns about Gotion's plans.
Moreover, there is the fundamental concern that China's regime has found another way to infiltrate American society. The non-profit Concerned Citizens of Manteno is suing to stop the "gigafactory" there because of Gotion's ties to the Communist Party of China.
"We cannot afford to give the Chinese regime more influence in our already infiltrated state and country," Ives, also CEO of Breakthrough Ideas, a conservative policy organization, told me by phone this week.
Opponents are also raising the issue of Gotion's use of forced labor. "There is indisputable evidence that two CCP-aligned battery makers, Gotion and CATL, are deeply connected to forced labor and the ongoing genocide in China," said Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, before the passage of the Decoupling from Foreign Adversarial Battery Dependence Act. "Gotion and CATL plan to build factories in the United States and thereby grow our dependence on their slave labor-tainted supply chains."
The act, one of the 25 "China Week" bills that passed the House this month, prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from purchasing batteries from six companies, including Gotion.
Almost all of China's green products are made with the forced labor of Uyghurs and other minorities. The U.S. Tariff Act of 1930, as amplified by the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of 2021, prohibits importing such products made with that labor. The Biden administration, which tried behind the scenes to block the 2021 act, has not vigorously enforced this prohibition.
Enforcement will cripple Gotion's plans. For instance, the company intends at the Manteno plant to use components tainted by forced labor in China. Containers from China have already arrived in the village.
"Our government should never buy batteries sourced from companies beholden to the CCP," Moolenaar said this month. "We cannot be dependent on our foremost adversary, and we must ensure the CCP can never profit from its genocide and human rights abuses."
Chairman Moolenaar is right. The U.S. in fact has a treaty commitment, contained in Article I of the Genocide Convention of 1948, "to prevent and to punish" acts of genocide. The Trump administration, on its last full day, formally declared that China's campaign against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities constituted that crime, and the Biden administration soon confirmed that declaration.
At a minimum, the U.S. should not effectively finance genocide by supporting a business such as Gotion. Although Biden may not be particularly active in enforcing the Genocide Convention, residents in Michigan and Illinois, trying to preserve their communities, are.
Yes, Gotion is the place to draw the line.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and the upcoming Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
