MICHAEL LAFAIVE It's Time to End Government Handouts to Big Business
American government is a business and you're not the customer.
Taxpayers in Michigan and across America are finally getting fed up with corporate welfare.
Michigan has appropriated $2.9 billion for corporate welfare in the first quarter of 2023. Taxpayers are funding countless companies, almost always without knowing it and almost always with nothing to show for it. If there’s a silver lining to the Gotion deal, it’s that taxpayers in Michigan and across America are finally waking up to the corporate-welfare farce.
In a deal that’s drawn nationwide attention, Michigan is handing over more than $700 million in taxpayer-funded fiscal favors to a battery company. While the debate mainly centers on the company’s apparent ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the spending has Michigan taxpayers in a bipartisan uproar. This deal isn’t even the largest one Michigan is underwriting this year, nor is it the first time the Great Lakes State has given money to companies with connections to the Chinese government. But it has the potential to spark a broader revolt against taxpayer handouts to politically favored businesses. The company in question is Gotion, which is partially owned by Chinese interests. Its parent company operates under bylaws that state it must “perform its duties in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China and other Party Regulations.” This didn’t stop lawmakers from falling over themselves to offer Gotion taxpayer funding, which a state senate committee approved by a 10–9 vote in late April. Local backlash caused the company to halt plans to build in one township near the city of Big Rapids and settle on a different site. But protests continue more than a month later. People are right to criticize this blatant act of corporate welfare, but the issues with the deal run far deeper than Gotion’s supposed ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Michigan lawmakers are doing what they’ve done for decades, and what virtually all their peers in other states do: wasting taxpayer money on corporate handouts unlikely to produce any real benefits for the state. Gotion will likely do what nearly every company does after receiving such state-funded largesse: not deliver on its promises.