Vance claims 'Democrats are helping China' in pitch to autoworkers at Big Rapids campaign event

Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, speaking near the site of a major electric vehicle battery factory project, charged that Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and the current Democratic administration "are helping China destroy and replace our auto industry from the inside out."

Vance held a campaign event Tuesday in Big Rapids, Michigan near where Gotion Inc., a company that, according to FARA filings, was quietly registered as a Chinese foreign principal in 2023, is planning to build a $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery plant.

Vance said that Harris' "tie-breaking vote that she cast to send inflation through the roof," referring to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, made "Chinese companies like Gotion eligible for millions of your taxpayer dollars."

"Even some of the folks in Obama's administration said that the Gotion factory plant is a threat to America's national security," Vance told the audience. "But 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."

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"Democrats in this state, and including Kamala Harris, want to give hundreds of millions of dollars to those same companies that have been undercutting Michigan autoworkers. What a disaster, isn't it?" he added. "Donald Trump has a different idea. He is going to drill, baby, drill. We're going to unleash American workers and bring back those great factories."

The senator also touched on the drama surrounding former President Trump's scheduled debate with Vice President Harris after reports that the