- 2/11/2025 8:18:10 PM
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RICHMOND, Virginia – – Guv Glenn Youngkin stated Thursday that he felt that Ford's collaboration with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL) to build a battery factory potentially sited in Virginia seemed like an effort to evade the intent behind the Inflation Reduction Act, and implicated The Richmond Times-Dispatch of neglecting facts in reporting on his decision to block the financial advancement chance from moving forward in the Commonwealth.
" It was a consortium, as reported and confirmed by Ford, where Ford would develop the structure but a company that is majorly influenced by the Chinese Communist Party was going to run the plant and the workers are going to work for the Chinese Communist Party-controlled business," the governor stated in response to a question about the deal at a press conference on an unrelated subject.
" Second of all, they were going to utilize that in order to try to take advantage of taxpayer benefits at the federal level that were specifically designated for non-Chinese Communist Party entities. And as an outcome, when the procedure to propose Ford to come here, which had actually not been chosen, concerned me, I felt this was entirely inconsistent with the way taxpayer money should be utilized, and I seemed like it was a bit deceptive, the method they had actually structured it," he said.
Youngkin stated that with those concerns, he didn't wish to tie up the website for a prospective deal.
In December, Bloomberg reported that Virginia and Michigan were under consideration for the factory and that the Ford-CATL partnership "would let the center qualify for profitable production tax credits under the new Inflation Reduction Act while needing no direct monetary investment from CATL."
That month, an anonymous source told The Daily Caller that Youngkin had blocked Virginia from factor to consider for the factory. On Monday, January 16, The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the plant would have created 2,500 jobs in southside Virginia.
On Thursday morning prior to journalism conference, the paper reported that Ford had actually informed Virginia that it had actually already selected a Virginia mega-site for the task prior to Youngkin obstructed it in December, according to two anonymous sources.
The Times said, "Youngkin stated those realities are ‘‘ fundamentally wrong,' but consistently refused to answer whether anybody had actually informed him Ford had actually selected Virginia."
At the Thursday press conference, Youngkin consistently criticized The Times to media, consisting of a Times education reporter.
Not a single proposition had actually been made to Ford, and I felt it was inconsistent with what Virginia needs to utilize taxpayer money for. The Richmond Times-Dispatch selected to overlook the truths and write a story that is truly based on hearsay due to the fact that they have a program, and I'm disappointed in that extremely much," Youngkin said.
After Youngkin's interview, The Times updated the article: "A spokesperson for Ford Motor Company said Thursday that the business had not made a site choice decision on its plans for an electric car battery plant in collaboration with a Chinese business."
On Thursday afternoon, Ford spokeswoman Melissa Miller told The Virginia Star in an e-mail, "I'm restricted in what I can share due to the private nature of the website selection procedures, however I can inform you that the reporting you referral isn't accurate; Ford has not made a website selection decision. Beyond that, our talks with CATL, the world's leading battery manufacturer, continue. In 2015, Ford revealed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with CATL to explore their providing batteries for Ford cars and said that we plan to localize the production of LFP [lithium-ferro-phosphate] batteries in North America. We have nothing new to reveal on either front at this time."
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