Sen.
Marco Rubio
(R-FL) is pushing the Biden administration to investigate a business deal between
Ford
and battery giant CATL after the automaker announced plans to build a manufacturing facility in Michigan that it will operate in conjunction with the Chinese company.
Rubio’s scrutiny adds to GOP misgivings about the plant, which has become a point of division between Republicans, whose hawkishness toward China is overriding the economic advantages of hosting the $3.5 billion facility, and Democrats, who are ready to take the jobs.
Rubio, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised concerns in a letter to Cabinet secretaries about CATL’s connection to the Chinese government and said the Ford-CATL venture should not receive any federal funding, such as new tax credits passed in Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
IN VIRGINIA, CHINA WORRIES COMPETE WITH NEW JOBS
CATL, the largest battery manufacturer in the world, is not owned by the Chinese government, but the United States should not subsidize the business of “[People’s Republic of China] champions,” Rubio said.
“Even nominally private Chinese companies enjoy rich state support from Beijing, as well as important controls on their ownership,” Rubio said in a letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
“These firms are also obliged by numerous CCP policies and laws to support the regime’s objectives,” Rubio said, adding, “If Chinese companies like CATL are able to exploit both Chinese and United States incentives for battery and EV technology through clever corporate arrangements, then there is no use in investing federal funds toward industrial development in the first place.”
Ford announced Marshall, Michigan, as the site of a $3.5 billion battery plant it plans to build and operate with CATL, in which some 2,500 employees will work to manufacture lithium iron phosphate batteries beginning in 2026.
Under the arrangement, Ford’s wholly-owned subsidiary would manufacture the battery cells using “battery cell knowledge and services” provided by CATL, according to the company’s announcement.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) celebrated the plant for bringing more jobs to the state, which offered some $1 billion in state incentives for the plant.
Ford finalized Michigan as the site weeks after Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) made public that his state
would not extend a subsidy package
to lure the plant. Ford had considered southern Virginia as a site for the plant.
“We felt that the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front, for China, to America, let’s develop our own technology,” Youngkin said in January.
Democrats in the state legislature
slammed him for the move
, saying he wasted a major economic opportunity for rural Virginia.
Rubio issued his demands at a time of intense industrial competition between the U.S. and China.
Republicans and Democrats have argued in favor of policies to claw back manufacturing from China, which dominates key industries such as critical minerals mining and battery manufacturing with the help of healthy government subsidies.
The Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ $369 billion green energy and healthcare spending law, extends tax credits to support projects such as Ford’s plant, and companies that make batteries and other technologies have announced an array of projects after the law’s passage.
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Ford officials said the law’s production tax credits made the project more viable.
