EXCLUSIVE — House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) has requested a briefing from a top Treasury Department panel on its move to approve a China-linked green energy firm's electric vehicle battery plant project.
National security experts and Republicans are raising concerns over how the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews transactions involving overseas entities, approved the California-based Gotion, the parent company of which, Gotion High-Tech Power Energy, is based in China, for a $2.4 billion EV battery plant project in Big Rapids, Michigan. McMorris Rodgers recently emailed CFIUS to obtain information about the Gotion matter as part of her broader investigation into President Joe Biden's climate agenda.
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"Energy and Commerce Republicans are committed to preventing the Biden administration from handing China the keys to our auto future," McMorris Rodgers told the Washington Examiner. "That's why we've asked CFIUS for a briefing on their role in Gotion's approval and have recently begun probing Ford's partnership with CCP-linked EV company CATL."
The revelation comes days after McMorris Rodgers and other GOP members on the Energy and Commerce panel demanded answers from Ford Motor Company in connection to its Marshall, Michigan, partnership with the Chinese battery firm Contemporary Amperex Technology. In February, Ford said it planned to invest $3.5 billion in a lithium iron phosphate battery facility and noted the automaker teamed with CATL for manufacturing.
Like Ford, Gotion's project is supported by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), who said in October that the California-based company would construct two 550,000-square-foot production plants along with other supporting facilities in northern Michigan. In April, Michigan's state Senate Appropriations Committee approved Gotion to obtain $175 million in taxpayer dollars for its project, which CFIUS greenlighted in June following a national security review.
"Partnerships like these play right into China's hands to take American jobs and weaken our national security," McMorris Rodgers said.
Gotion High-Tech, which, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing, "wholly" controls Gotion and is headquartered in Hefei City, China, formed a Chinese Communist Party branch in 2010, followed by a 2014 CCP committee, the Daily Caller reported. The Chinese firm has also employed 923 CCP members, including CEO Li Zhen, the committee's party secretary, the outlet reported.
Meanwhile, Gotion High-Tech's "Articles of Association" state: "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. The secretary of the Party committee shall be the chairman."
The Gotion project in Michigan is particularly notable, given one of the proposed facilities will reportedly be located within 100 miles of Camp Grayling, the largest National Guard training facility in the United States, which, on an annual basis, sees Michigan's National Guard training a portion of the military in Taiwan, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"At this point in time, all federal and state government officials have been apprised of the serious threat of the CCP to the U.S.," Erin Walsh, who, under former President Donald Trump, served in the National Security Council, as well as the Commerce and State departments, told the Washington Examiner.
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"They have infiltrated almost every aspect of American society over the past 20 plus years. In the case of Gotion, state and federal legislators, the local community have stated their opposition and concerns about their ownership structure and ties to the CCP," added Walsh, now a senior research fellow for international studies at the Heritage Foundation's Asia Studies Center.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and Gotion did not reply to requests for comment.