A company behind an electric vehicle plant in Michigan has registered as a foreign entity, its legal documents show.
Gotion Inc., the company planning to open a battery factory for electrical vehicles (EVs) in Michigan, near Big Rapids, Mecosta County, has registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to the registration document it submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The document states that Gotion, which is based in Fremont, California, is “wholly owned and controlled” by Gotion High-tech Co. Ltd., a Chinese company based near Hefei, a city in eastern China.
The document also asks the registrant to state if “this foreign principal,” meaning the American company Gotion Inc. is either “supervised,” “directed,” or “financed” by “a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal.”
Gotion’s answer to this was “No.”
It is, though, “completely controlled” by Gotion High-tech Co., a Chinese company.
The document also asks if the “foreign principal,” or Gotion Inc., will engage in “political activities.” Gotion’s answer to this was “Yes.”
Gotion explains that the company came into contact with many CEOs and company directors in Michigan, as well as politicians, in its pursuit of starting the battery plant.
The method used by Gotion to achieve this was “communication by email, text, and phone with members of the Michigan executive and legislative branches on legal and policy-related matters.”
In addition, there was communication by email or phone with the “Mecosta County Board of Commissioners regarding legal and policy concerns” with the proposed battery plant, including “economic incentives, and rezoning.”
Just the News reported that Gotion secured a $1 billion taxpayer support for its factory and that its overall cost would be $2.4 billion.
Michigan residents, Republicans, and environmental groups have raised concerns about the deal.
All companies in China, including foreign companies, are required under the law to have a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) office set up inside the company’s structure. This office supervises the company’s function.
Gotion High-Tech’s governing article states:
“Article 9: The Company shall set up a Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China. The Company shall ensure necessary conditions for carrying out Party activities.”
It goes on to say, “The secretary of the Party committee shall be the chairman.”
This seems to mean that the CCP committee inside the company is not just for supervising and reporting back to the CCP but it also functions as the director of the company.
In other words, a Chinese company is a CCP-controlled company, which is allowed to control an American company that conducts business and probably lobbies American politicians.
The Chinese Gotion’s “Party Committee” will ensure the company follows the Chinese Communist Party’s regulations and “lead the ideological and political work, united front work, spiritual civilization construction, enterprise culture construction, labor union, Communist Youth League and other mass work of the Company; lead the construction of Party conduct and clean government, and support the Commission for Discipline Inspection,” according to the articles.
Gotion’s North American Manufacturing Vice President Chuck Thelen dismissed concerns saying that Gotion Inc. is “not Chinese-owned.”
“The rumors that you’ve heard about us bringing communism to North America are just flat-out fear-mongering and really have nothing based in reality,” he said earlier this month, according to Politico.
Chinese Battery Companies
Yet another Chinese company, named CATL, producing EV batteries has plans of making business with a Ford battery plant in Michigan.The factory will be owned by Ford through a wholly owned subsidiary without foreign investment; Chinese EV battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) will provide the battery technology, some equipment, and Chinese workers. The plant is expected to start operating in Marshall, a small township 100 miles west of Detroit, in 2026.
Michigan locals are mounting resistance against the plant being concerned about CATL’s communist backing, the associated national security risk, the loss of prime farmland, the lack of transparency in the process, and an oversize industrial park’s impact on a small town.
But EV batteries might not come only through China. Chinese investment in South Korea might serve a similar purpose, as South Korea has a free trade agreement with the United States.
In the past five months, four Chinese firms have announced investing more than 5.6 trillion won ($4 billion) in South Korea for new EV battery factories. These deals were established to take advantage of Korea’s free-trade agreement with the United States to qualify for EV tax credits under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has asked the Biden administration to stop U.S. electric vehicle tax credits from going to Chinese companies through their partnerships in South Korea.
“The products manufactured in our South Korean base meet the critical minerals requirements in the IRA bill for the benefit of tariff policies when exporting to European and U.S. markets,” Ningbo Ronbay New Energy Technology Co. stated in an announcement regarding setting up a plant in South Korea to produce 80,000 tons of EV battery precursors a year. The value of the investment hasn’t been disclosed.
Another Chinese company, GEM Co., Ltd., stated in a March release, “To qualify for tax credits, IRA requires that consumer electric vehicles contain a certain percentage of battery materials and critical minerals from America or countries with a free-trade agreement with America, but China is not one such country.”
GEM also stated that its investment of more than $937 million in an EV battery precursor factory with an annual production capacity of 43,000 tons in South Korea was a response to the IRA. The project is implemented by a joint venture between South Korea’s SK On Co. Ltd. and Ecopro Materials Co. Ltd.
“Since the Democrat’s Inflation Reduction Act, I have been deeply concerned that China would benefit from American taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Rubio said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.
“Now, reports that Chinese firms are setting up partnerships in South Korea in order to qualify for Joe Biden and the Democrats’ EV tax credits prove those concerns are warranted.
Furthermore, every American state now has plans to construct a network of EV charging stations with funding from the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed new vehicle emission standards for nearly all vehicle classes in order to gradually eliminate combustion engine vehicles and impose a long-term transformation of the market that will affect millions of Americans nationwide.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, enacted in 2021, featured $25 billion for things such as charging stations, EV production, and mining. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act doled out billions of dollars more in subsidies, and several European countries and U.S. states have banned or plan to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles over the next several years.
Electric vehicles are marketed as a way of going away from fossil fuels, but they use batteries that are extracted and mined using fossil fuels, then charged with electricity generated at least in part by fossil fuels.
Whether an EV emits less CO2 than an internal combustion engine over its lifetime depends greatly on how its component minerals are produced, and how, where, and when the EV is driven and charged. Predictions that EVs will be cleaner than internal combustion engine vehicles appear to be based on best-case scenarios across the board.
A compilation of 50 academic studies found that emissions from a single EV battery ranged from eight to 20 tons of CO2, depending on where and how raw materials are sourced and processed.
“The high end of those ranges is nearly as much CO2 as is produced by the lifetime of fuel burned by an efficient conventional car,” energy economist Mike Mills wrote. “Again, that’s before the EV is delivered to a customer and driven its first mile.”
Some carmakers are stepping out of line to criticize the EV movement. In January 2022, Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis—which formed the world’s fifth-largest carmaker through a merger of Fiat, Chrysler, and Peugeot—said EVs were “a technology chosen by politicians” and “imposed” on the auto sector.
