Set among green rolling hills and tall pines, Lori Brock’s storybook farm encapsulates northern Michigan. A five-day-old mare bucks around a pen, while small black pigs roam through a barn and donkeys graze in fields bordered by white fences.
It is a bucolic way of life in Green Township, but one that Brock and many of her neighbours believe could be threatened by an unlikely adversary – China’s Communist party.
Just south of her property, a company called Gotion is moving forward with a huge $2.4bn, 2m sq ft (186,000 sq metre) plant that would produce lithium battery components for electric vehicles (EVs). It is a US-based firm but its parent company is Chinese.
Brock and her neighbours say they are in a fight to preserve Green Township’s rural character and stave off the “national security risk” of a Chinese company. They insist they are on the brink of derailing the project.
Across the US, anti-China sentiment is threatening to disrupt the transition to EVs. That transition is partly funded by Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, but many of its projects – which also aim to revive struggling rural economies – are in Republican districts and are powered by Chinese funding, which is opposed by some residents.
In this context, Green Township – with a population of 3,200 – forms just one part of the broader economic conflict between the US and China. With some analysts convinced that Beijing is winning the race to store clean energy, the US is in the difficult position of needing to embrace China’s technology. On Tuesday, Biden announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made EVs as part of a package of measures designed to protect US manufacturers from cheap imports.
The stakes are especially high in Michigan, which is attempting to preserve its standing as the world’s auto capital in the EV era. The state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and legislative leaders, including many Republicans, pulled together billions of dollars in tax incentives to ensure companies invest there. Gotion itself is expected to receive about $715m in state incentives.