Trump And Harris Are Fighting Over The Working Class, And 1 Town Is At The Center

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Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Tuesday came to Green Charter Township, Michigan, a small rural community that has taken on big importance in the 2024 campaign.

A parcel of land along the township’s southern border is the site of a planned electric vehicle (EV) battery factory that has turned into an intense political battle, one which faithful HuffPost readers may remember from a lengthy feature last summer.

The factory would bring an estimated 2,350 jobs to a region that has struggled economically because of the decline of American manufacturing. It’s one of literally dozens of such projects popping up in similar communities across the country as part of a clean energy boom that Democrats have helped to unleash ― most conspicuously by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature legislative accomplishment.

That law subsidizes the manufacturing and purchasing of EVs. The prospect of these subsidies creating a bigger consumer market is a big reason why Gotion, the battery manufacturer, decided to build this particular plant.

But the factory plans have provoked a furious local backlash. A big focus of the factory’s critics ― and the one that seems to resonate most politically in this deeply red, heavily pro-Trump community ― is a claim that it will help Chinese interests because Gotion is the U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese EV company.

Vance picked up on this at Tuesday’s rally , telling supporters that “Kamala Harris not only wants to allow the Chinese Communist Party to build factories on American soil, she wants to pay them to do it with our tax money.”

Vance’s visit to Green Charter