The US town, the Chinese company and the bankrupting battle over a battery plant

Less than three years ago, residents of a small rural township in the US state of Michigan packed a community hall to celebrate what many saw as a victory for local democracy over a Chinese-headquartered battery manufacturer.
The residents of Green Charter Township prayed, cheered and congratulated one another for overturning a town board that had supported Gotion’s proposed US$2.36 billion electric vehicle battery project.
As the new board quickly rescinded the Gotion plan, the residents applauded the defeat of a project they viewed as a “Trojan horse” that could bring undue Chinese Communist Party influence, environmental risks and irreversible changes to their way of life.
But the town could face a staggering financial price for that victory, leaving the community with an uncertain future.
Backed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the proposed project was a 109-hectare (270-acre) campus to produce lithium iron phosphate cells and EV components on a site that included more than 24 hectares of protected wetlands.
Projected to create nearly 2,500 jobs, it was promoted as a win for domestic manufacturing and clean-energy jobs.
It was designed to support Gotion Inc’s North American expansion and US efforts onshore critical supply chains. Gotion Inc is the US subsidiary of Gotion High-Tech Co Ltd, a China-based battery manufacturer.

Among the big concerns in Green Charter was whether the project’s ties to a foreign company could complicate oversight and long-term control. Residents also raised concerns about water use, the threat of pollution of the nearby wetlands and the impact on the Muskegon River system, which feeds into Lake Michigan.
Those concerns appeared to be over, when the town board was replaced and the agreement for the factory rescinded.
However, new ones have emerged. Gotion is suing the township for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for reversing the plan, exposing the rural community to financial liabilities that could threaten its very solvency.
“It’s preposterous,” said local activist Marjorie Steele, who lives a few miles from the site.
“A multibillion-dollar multinational corporation is trying to sue a township of 3,000 people for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
“You cannot punish us and sue us into submission ... this is my home, this is my land.”
Steele said residents were shocked by the scale of Gotion’s claims.
The lawsuit was amended this month to include claims for at least US$23 million, the amount of state grant money the company was ordered to return, as well as additional damages tied to alleged lost profits and project delays.
Steele said that even if the company prevailed in court, she doubted the township could ever pay such a sum.
Township supervisor Jason Kruse also acknowledged the financial challenge, noting that Green Charter relied on a relatively small tax base and limited state support.
“So I wouldn’t anticipate that those dynamics, along with a US$23 million payout if it were awarded to Gotion, would be very easy to navigate,” he told local news outlet 13 On Your Side this month.
“We are still working on pursuing smaller projects within the township that we know we can fit into our budget. We have had to more closely monitor our budget because of the lawsuit.”
Kruse did not respond to the South China Morning Post’s request for comment.

Gotion first lodged its suit against Green Charter in 2024 and won a preliminary injunction against the township’s rescission.
Under that injunction, Gotion could have moved forward with the project but it held off, pointing to sustained local opposition and the newly elected board’s refusal to cooperate.
In a June 12 court filing against Gotion’s amended lawsuit the township argued that Gotion had “sat idly by – injunction in hand – while its project withered”.
The township further contended that Gotion’s new claims for hundreds of millions in damages were both prejudicial to the small rural community.
“Allowing Gotion to amend its complaint to assert four new claims and seek money damages, which Gotion now claims are in the ‘hundreds of millions’, rather than the tens of millions … would require additional discovery … all of which would unquestionably prejudice the township,” it said in the filing.
Nevertheless, Gotion argues that the township’s actions “not only demonstrated a continued breach of its obligations, but also that any attempt to move forward with the project would be futile”, referring to the protracted local opposition.
The mounting legal fees from the Gotion lawsuit have already strained the town’s finances – the community reported a budget deficit of nearly US$400,000 for 2024-2025.
Concerns about those finances were apparent at a town hall meeting on June 9, when residents said that if the community had to raise property taxes to make up the shortfall, housing could become unaffordable and families would be forced to move. Road maintenance, community projects and emergency reserves could be cut back for years. In prolonged financial distress, municipalities may also have to consider restructuring, including consolidation or temporary county oversight, until finances improve.
Gotion has made at least one attempt to assuage environmental fears over the proposed facility.
In April 2024, the company’s North America head, Chuck Thelen, put a brave face on at a town hall and ate lithium iron phosphate in front of the residents.
Steele, who runs the Economic Development Responsibility Alliance of Michigan, a grass-roots lobbying non-profit, claimed Thelen’s stunt “traumatised” the community, and failed to both provide satisfactory answers and build faith.
Thelen did not respond to request for comment. But in an earlier interview with the SCMP, he described local concerns as “fear sandwich” and said he had received threats as a result of the controversy around the project.
The Gotion project has since become a national political flashpoint.
John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, slammed Gotion’s damages claim as “further example of CCP lawfare”, with Gotion seeking to “bankrupt the town” and its “patriotic” residents who have “time and time again” rejected it.
Last year, the Republican lawmaker from Michigan managed to get his “No Gotion” bill passed, prohibiting government grants to “CCP-linked” companies.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump opposed the Gotion plan, citing concerns about dependence on China for critical supply chains. His running mate, J.D. Vance, held a rally near the site with Moolenaar, highlighting local opposition and framing the project as an issue of US security and sovereignty.
The dispute, observers say, has become a test case for one of America’s biggest economic contradictions.
Washington is pushing for more factories, battery plants, semiconductor facilities and AI infrastructure to be built on American soil, with politicians from both parties increasingly arguing that critical industries must be brought closer to home and less dependent on China.
Yet across the country, communities are increasingly resisting the very projects required to make that vision a reality.
Residents involved in the Green Charter Township fight argue the Gotion case has become a warning for other foreign developers: without clear and sustained approval from local communities, large-scale industrial projects will struggle to proceed in the US.
According to Denis Simon of the Quincy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, US national politics “plainly shaped the strong opposition” to the project.
While local concerns over water use, land, transparency and community control were “real”, Simon said they became intertwined with “broader political anxieties about China, EV policy, national security, and partisan politics”.
That fusion, he argued, “made compromise much harder or impossible” and might have led the new board to underestimate the legal risks.
“Once government bodies sign agreements, especially where a company has relied on them and spent tens of millions, reversal carries serious contractual consequences,” Simon said.
The fallout could extend beyond the project itself.
“Foreign investors will ask whether local approvals in the United States are durable,” Simon said, noting if projects could be approved, funded and then reversed after an election, investors might seek stronger guarantees, demand higher risk premiums, or avoid politically sensitive jurisdictions altogether.
“A judgment in the hundreds of millions would be extremely damaging and even debilitating for a small township,” he added.
For Green Charter Township, the outcome remains uncertain. On social media, some residents have framed the dispute in starkly nationalist terms: one expressed outrage at what they saw as a Chinese company “demanding US constitutional rights”, while another argued it would be “un-American if the judge rules in Gotion’s favour”.
For Steele, the Gotion issue is not about China or any political party but about “our water, our land and our right to self-determination”.
“When you’re working in America, you cannot assume and expect to bulldoze over local residents. It’s not going to work,” she said.