In 2023, the Biden administration announced it would loan $850 million to a company called KORE Power to construct a battery production facility in Arizona. The purpose of the deal was to reduce the U.S.’s reliance on China’s batteries, but the organization recently tasked its co-owner, a Chinese battery producer, with building the taxpayer-funded facility.
The Biden administration touted the project, claiming it would “strengthen the domestic battery supply chain” while combatting China’s global market superiority.
KORE Power, which has headquarters in Idaho and around 150 employees, seemed like a company wishing to strip China of its market power. Recent records have indicated the organization has extensive roots in China.
Biden To Give $850 Million to a Chinese-Owned Battery Company https://t.co/1rCjjcPlVj
— GOP (@GOP) February 28, 2024
The Washington Free Beacon reported that KORE Power is 14% co-owned by Do-Fluoride New Materials (DFD), which is a Chinese battery manufacturer led by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official Li Shijiang.
Shijiang’s daughter, Li Lingyun, serves as vice chair of DFD, vice president of China’s state-supervised Patent Protection Association and one of KORE Power’s directors.
The loan by the Biden administration to KORE Power demonstrates that the federal government’s green energy funding is helping China, given the country’s dominance in the global market.
In 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) had to cancel a $200 million grant to Microvast, a battery maker, after the Washington Free Beacon reported that the company operated in China.
In court filings from November 2023, KORE Power revealed that DFD New Energy, a Chinese subsidiary of DFD, would help construct the battery production facility in Arizona.
“The facility is under construction at present and DFD New Energy will assist in the buildout,” KORE Power CEO Lindsay Gorrill said.
In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, the DOE confirmed that DFD would help KORE Power construct the battery plant in Arizona by providing intellectual property, engineering capabilities and research.
“The partnership with DFD provides KORE with access to proven IP and an experienced team — experience that does not currently exist at [that] scale [in] the United States, but through this partnership will be transferred to American workers and to an American company,” the department said.
The approval given to KORE Power and DFD to construct the Arizona facility comes after the inspector general of the DOE told Congress in October 2023 that DFD’s use of technology “clearly does not support the legislation’s goals of U.S. technology development since this project deploys Chinese intellectual property.”
