Hard to decide who was worse. What state will wHitmer flee to when her term ends. Granholm fled to California until obiden recycled her like a trashed receptacle.
Posted on 10/24/2025 10:58:44 AM PDT by DFG
While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Michigan Economic Development Corporation contends it’s “not the outcome we hoped for,” residents in Mecosta County are celebrating its decision to nix $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives for Gotion.
MEDC officials on Thursday notified lawmakers that the company with strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party is in breach of its economic development contract, which was negotiated in secret by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration and select lawmakers just three years ago.
“It’s about damn time,” Marjorie Steele, founder of the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance that opposed Gotion’s planned $2.4 billion EV battery plant, told Bridge Michigan. “What the MEDC tried to pull here in Big Rapids was just so egregious.”
Whitmer claimed in 2022 that the agreement, which included $715 million in taxpayer-funded incentives and tax breaks, would fuel “the biggest ever economic development project in Northern Michigan” and create “2,350 good-paying jobs in Big Rapids.”
“I don’t foresee a world in which this project goes forward,” MEDC COO Christin Armstrong told Crain’s Detroit Business on Thursday. “Even if it was to go forward, just given the passage of time and the circumstances on the ground, it’s not the same as what it was [when] approved in 2022. The world has shifted so significantly since then. I think it’s safe to say that the project is not going to happen as we had originally foresaw or planned or hoped.”
The MEDC’s Michigan Strategic Fund last month notified Gotion it was in violation of its grant agreement due to a “cessation of eligible activities” for at least 120 days, which is considered “abandonment” according to the terms, The Detroit News reports.
The notice also alleged Gotion’s involvement in two lawsuits violates a provision of the contract that prohibits litigation what “would reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on the project or the grantees performance of its obligations under the agreement.”
Gotion, of course, disputed those findings.
Gotion attorney Mark Heusel wrote in an Oct. 15 response the company was “shocked” by the MEDC’s notice, according to the Big Rapids Pioneer.
“It is even more surprising that the state of Michigan suggests that Gotion has ‘abandoned’ the Project considering the immense challenges that Gotion has experienced in Michigan,” Heusel wrote. “These well-documented challenges, false accusations, and politically motivated attacks were not through any actions or inactions by Gotion, but solely due to racist and ethnically charged stereotypes that led Green Charter Township to breach the parties’ Development Agreement.”
“We are disappointed that the State and the MSF have initiated such action in light of these facts and, notwithstanding Gotion’s inability to proceed with this Project due to Green Charter Township’s brazen and intentional breach of the Development Agreement, Gotion remains committed to its obligations in Michigan,” Heusel wrote.
The project was initially approved by Green Charter Township in 2023, but all township trustees were later recalled or resigned amid widespread public opposition to the development over a variety of concerns, from its potential impact on the environment to Gotion’s strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
Gotion responded by suing the township when the new trustees reversed course on support for the project, which was initially kept secret from taxpayers.
Congressman John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, has repeatedly pointed to Gotion’s status as the “wholly-owned and controlled” subsidiary of Gotion High-Tech, a Chinese company that’s subsidized by the Chinese government, in calling on Michigan officials to cancel its development agreement.
Employees at Gotion High-Tech are required to swear an allegiance to the CCP, and members of Gotion’s North American leadership team attend CCP board meetings, he said.
“Despite Gotion’s rosy promises and influence campaign on local leaders, the residents of Green Charter Township repeatedly showed us they do not support a company beholden to the Chinese Communist Party setting up shop in their town,” Moolenaar said in a statement Thursday. “Two years ago, this community came together and recalled the officials who welcomed Gotion and the CCP to town. Instead of listening to the will of the people, the company decided to fight them; suing the resilient small town in a vain attempt to force its way in, and ridiculing those who did not support its project.
“While fighting the rural community, the company was derelict in its responsibilities to the State,” Moolenaar said. “Now that its contract with the State of Michigan and MEDC is set to be terminated, the people of Green Charter Township can finally move on from Gotion’s lies and broken promises.”
Former U.S. Ambassador and Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group Director Joseph Cella also sided with the Green Township opponents of the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Gotion project.
“What did Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the MEDC expect when they collaborated in a ‘deal’ with a company that is deeply tied to the Chinese Communist Party, who is engaged in unrestricted warfare against the United States of America?” Cella said in a statement.
“This was a textbook subnational incursion and influence operation. You don’t subsidize these things, you stop them,” Cella continued.
“Unconscionably, the government and business elites who conceived and championed this ‘deal’ in a very secretive and fast moving manner did not perform basic strict scrutiny and due diligence. This completely disregarded the guidance of our national security and intelligence agencies about how to handle such transactions, and as a result, ruptured the consent of the governed, exposed Michigan taxpayers, and jeopardized our national security,” Cella said.
“Now is the time for the Michigan Legislature and Green Charter Township to hold the MEDC to account and have them reimburse Green Charter Township for the legal fees the township has spent defending themselves from Gotion’s frivolous lawsuit that the company is likely going to lose,” he concluded.
In a statement to the media, the MEDC said ending Gotion’s taxpayer support “is not the outcome we hoped for,” but argued it has a “tremendous responsibility” to ensure Michiganders’ “hard-earned tax dollars are spent wisely and appropriately,” the Pioneer reports.
The agency is now working to recoup $23.6 million it spent on land for the planned Gotion factory. The rest of Gotion’s funding, it said, remains unused.
Rich Studley, former CEO of the Michigan Chamber, told Bridge Michigan he has “zero confidence” the state will recover what it spent on the land, “or that they won’t do it again.”
“I’m not happy that we missed an opportunity to encourage job creation and economic growth in the Big Rapids area,” he said. “But, it is encouraging to see the (state) and Gotion held accountable.”
Chuck Thelen, Gotion’s VP of North American manufacturing, told the Pioneer the company hasn’t yet given up on forcing its way into Mecosta County.
“Gotion, however, recognizes the significance of the hurdles that have been placed in front of this project by those who oppose it. And, it is true that the local municipalities’ actions are presenting a barrier to the project proceeding and, without their support, neither this project nor any other project could be completed,” Thelen wrote in a statement. “The current steps taken by the MSF are a direct result of those actions by the local municipalities. Nonetheless, we welcome a conversation with the state and the local governments regarding the future of this development.”
Killing that was the best thing for Mecosta County.
Thank goodness. Having the CCP so close to the Soo Locks and Canal was frightening.
This effort to “save the planet” would have been established in a place called Green Charter Township. How corny was that?
“”” would fuel “the biggest ever economic development project in Northern Michigan” and create “2,350 good-paying jobs in Big Rapids.”””””
2,350 jobs for CHINESE SPIES shot to hell.
EV’s will go away in Trump’s Third Reign, I mean term. snicker
Good news. Thanks for posting. Gretchen Whitmer is EVIL.
Guess we’re all tired of the left tossing her name around for POTUS... that skank is worse than Moleface if you can believe it. Hope she enters the race though, it’ll be fun exposing her criminal escapades as all that botox has leached to her brain.
Yes... worse than Moleface.
Andrew Cuomo cut a lot of private deals when he was Governor of New York State. He gave tax breaks, incentives, constructing factories and buildings using billions of taxpayer dollars, then the deals fell through and the things he built ended up being empty. One building he built for $10 million in Syracuse was supposed to be a film archive. The individuals he had the deal with dropped out, and the building was eventually sold to the county for $1. He did the same thing three more times, and all three times millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted because the deals fell through, or they didn’t bring in the number of jobs that was predicted with the deal. His last fiasco was spending $100 million in taxpayer money for lights for the bridges in the City. The lights never got installed, and they were recently auctioned off for $25. See a pattern here? His friends and big donors got the money to do the construction, which were basically paybacks for donating to his campaigns. And he was allowed to get away with it. Some of those same people probably donated to his Mayoral campaign, and would expect paybacks from him if he got elected. Same Andrew, same M.O., same bullshit.
THE KEY SENTENCE FOR ME:
ALL EMPLOYEES ARE TO SWEAR ALLEGIANCE TO CCP.
THESE ARE HARD CORE AMERICANS....THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS
WE DO NOT NEED CCP COMPANIES HERE
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