Chicago City Wire

Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon is questioning the overly generous taxpayer subsidies planned for the proposed Gotion plant in Manteno.

Glennon joined a discussion with various stakeholders, including Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon and Illinois Freedom Caucus Representatives State Rep. Blaine Wilhour (R-Beecher City), State Rep. Chris Miller (R-Oakland), and State Rep. Brad Halbrook (R-Shelbyville).

“For starters, that’s going to cost taxpayers $8 billion for 2,600 jobs,” Glennon said on the Freedom Caucus’s weekly Roundtable. “That’s over $3 million per job, which is unheard of in the incentive industry for states trying to attract plants. Now, $536 million of that is Illinois taxpayers even that’s unheard of. That’s $200,000 per job. The average is $50,000-60,000 in other states. The rest is a federal tax credit, a very generous tax credit. That’s basically like cash for $7.5 billion over five years.”

“And amazingly, this is going to a Chinese company with clear links to the Chinese Communist Party. That’s well-established. The evidence is out there. They include, for example, a joint venture that the same company has with the Chinese military and the gentleman who was up on the stage with Pritzker at the announcement of this plant is an active member in essentially one of the branches of the Chinese Communist Party.  So this is really a crazy situation we’ve gotten into.”

The Illinois Freedom Caucus, along with local residents and supporters, is set to host a press conference on Oct. 2 to voice opposition to the battery plant planned for Manteno. This event aims to address concerns raised by Manteno residents, including zoning regulations, property taxes, healthcare access, and potential national security implications of the Chinese company’s generous subsidies through federal tax credits, amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and China.

The Gotion controversy involves the Chinese company’s plans to receive $8 billion in taxpayer subsidies for a $2 billion battery factory in Manteno, Illinois, has raised concerns among residents and lawmakers, according to Wirepoints. The citizens of Manteno, along with concerned Michigan residents and a U.S. House committee, are questioning the substantial taxpayer funding granted to a company with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The planned Manteno Gotion plant was recently noted in a letter written by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Representative John Moolenaar calling for a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) review of Gotion, Inc. due to its CCP ties and potential access to green-energy tax breaks. They expressed concerns about the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control over Gotion and its impact on critical infrastructure decisions in the U.S., particularly within the state of Illinois.

“The extent of the CCP’s control over Guoxuan (Gotion) is explicitly mentioned in the company’s corporate by-laws, which require the company ‘to carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the [Chinese Communist Party],’” the letter reads.

“In 2021, Guoxuan High-Tech hosted several company retreats where employees were mandated to recite a pledge of loyalty to the Party, including to ‘fight for communism.’ This is concerning, no less because the Biden Administration itself has described the PRC in its 2022 National Security Strategy as the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” and that ‘Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries.’ The CCP’s control over Guoxuan High-Tech is no exception to the Party’s strategy to exert its influence in the United States.”