Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Democrats signed off on $175 million in incentives to benefit Gotion in April 2023, and the company could also claim tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill. Many locals are opposed to the project, even voting to recall several local officials who supported Gotion’s plans, and Gotion’s Vice President of North American Operations Chuck Thelen told Politico in August 23 that the CCP has no presence in the North American arm of the company.

“Speaking last month in Grand Rapids, former President Trump supported the onshoring of electrification manufacturing in our state and the United States by Chinese-affiliated companies,” Thelen said in a statement about Trump’s post shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gotion did not say President Trump specifically supported the Gotion facility that is planned in Green Charter Township. Trump wants the people of Michigan and our local economy to thrive from these types of jobs, and so do we.”

“In March, President Trump also welcomed Chinese-affiliated investment into Michigan, among other states,” Thelen continued. “Gotion was honored to work with the Trump administration to engage in a three-year development project to improve battery technology among U.S. companies, and we look forward to building a multi-billion-dollar battery components facility in Michigan that will create 2,350 good-paying jobs for residents.”

However, Gotion’s updated Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) paperwork, filed in July, discloses that “Gotion is partially subsidized through government funding supplied by the People’s Republic of China.” DCNF investigations also revealed that Gotion High-Tech employed more than 900 CCP members, including its CEO, as of 2022 and that a traveling group of CCP members established a so-called talent recruitment “work station” at Gotion’s California headquarters in 2017.

The DCNF also unearthed video footage showing Gotion High-Tech employees dressed as Red Army soldiers and pledging loyalty to the CCP while on a company retreat. A separate DCNF probe found that Gotion High-Tech established a joint venture with a State Department-flagged “Communist Chinese military company subsidiary” in 2016.

A group of Congressional Republicans urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June to essentially blacklist Gotion High-Tech and another Chinese battery company, CATL, because of alleged ties to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. Thelen said later in June that the lawmakers’ allegations are “categorically false and clearly intended to deceive,” according to The Pioneer, a local news outlet.

Republican Reps. Darin LaHood of Illinois and John Moolenaar of Michigan, who represents the area where Gotion wants to build in Michigan and chairs the House Select Committee on the CCP, introduced the NO GOTION Act in November 2023 to prohibit CCP-affiliated firms from cashing in on IRA tax credits. The bill would also apply to companies tied to the governments of Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress in January that there is a possibility that the CCP uses Gotion’s planned Michigan facility “to gain the kind of advantages that they want that are counter, frankly, to the interests of the United States.” Gotion also has plans to build a facility in Illinois, with Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office suggesting in September 2023 that opposition to that project is ginned up and xenophobic.

Gotion High-Tech did not respond immediately to a request for comment.