After throwing a vulgar Twitter jab at businessman Elon Musk, a Democratic lawmaker in California pointed out, in a more tame tweet, that the Golden State has handed plenty of subsidies to Musk’s companies:
California has highly subsidized a company that has always disregarded worker safety & well-being, has engaged in union busting & bullies public servants. I probably could’ve expressed my frustration in a less aggressive way. Of course, no one would’ve cared if I tweeted that.
— Lorena (@LorenaSGonzalez) May 10, 2020
Musk has gotten into a tiff with the state government out there and is suing them. He wants to restart manufacturing at his Tesla factory in Fremont, but the state won’t let him. He is now threatening a lawsuit.
So California’s government has gone from subsidizing Tesla’s manufacturing to barring it.
It’s hard to find a total dollar amount of California’s subsidies for Tesla, but the subsidies have been thick and fast. Until this year, the state government covered $7,500 of every Tesla bought in the state. The Tesla factory applied for and qualified for plenty of tax breaks.
Early on, it got $612 million in tax breaks from California, according to Green Car Reports.
The federal government also subsidized the factory in question. Musk was a major donor to and fundraiser for Barack Obama. Obama’s administration issued a $465 million loan to help Musk’s company, Tesla, build the Fremont factory that would build components for all-electric cars. (Tesla has since repaid the loan, according to the Energy Department.)
It was fitting that in 2013, Musk used that factory to announce a subsidy auction: He was taking bids for massive subsidies for his next factory. As the Los Angeles Times put it: “Late in 2013, Tesla summoned economic development officials from seven states to its auto factory in Fremont, Calif. After a tour, they gathered in a conference room, where Tesla executives explained their plan to build the biggest lithium-ion battery factory in the world — then asked the states to bid for the project.”
Nevada “won” that contest, bringing in Tesla with $1.25 billion in subsidies.
You could call it a love-hate relationship.
