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Gov. Lee backs electric car industry, facing doubt, if not disaster

These stations are made by Tritium, which is planning a factory in Tennessee (Photo utoelectricca101)

We have been very vocal about the constitutional issues, amongst other problems, regarding our current state leadership’s drive to hand over our tax dollars to large corporations in the name of job creation and economic growth.

By Gary Humble / Tennessee Stands

The question we have posed is whether or not the state government should play a role in picking the winners and losers in any industry. Additionally, does the state have a duty to provide for a “return on investment” of your tax dollars? Where is that in the constitution?

The poster child for this discussion has been the almost $1 Billion dollar deal with the Ford Motor Company and their new Blue Oval City in West Tennessee. But you need to realize that there is a little more to the story.

This new megasite for Ford will not only be their single largest investment in any single production site in the world, it will also be the hub of manufacturing for Ford’s new fully electric F-150 truck. And from that, you must also recognize the trend of Tennessee’s push to be at the center of EV production. The state is not only banking on the future success of the EV industry, but we are significantly concentrating our economic development initiatives and the allocation of your tax money to subsidize the growth of this industry in our state, an industry that many conservatives believe is doomed for failure.

Aside from electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing, it has also just been announced that Tennessee will house the nation’s largest lithium refining plant to power EVs. Do we really understand the implications of what this means?

Not only is Tennessee’s economy being tied to a very new, unproven, and highly speculative industry, but consider the implications of being further tied to a global economy. The success of this industry and thereby the economic returns for our state will be directly tied to lithium mining around the world, a process known not only to be highly toxic with negative environmental implications but also known to be stressful to local economies around the world. And who has their hands in the middle of most of the lithium production in the world? The Chinese Communist Party.

But it is not only Ford’s largest EV plant, or the nation’s largest lithium refining plant coming to Tennessee. Per the article linked above, please take notice…

“The U.S. Department of Energy just announced $500 million in grants for three Tennessee projects related to battery manufacturing: a graphite plant in Chattanooga, a facility to create the “separators” between the electrodes of batteries in Clarksville and the lithium plant in Etowah.”

Tennesseans are forcibly being tied at the hip to the Green New Deal by state leadership and they are doing it with your tax money. And Governor Bill Lee is not shy about his excitement and desire to attract more EV activity to Tennessee. In a press conference regarding the new Tritium plant in Wilson County, Lee stated, “I welcome Tritium to Tennessee and thank the company for its commitment to create more than 500 new jobs in Wilson County. Our state’s highly-skilled workforce and position as a leader in the EV industry continue to attract companies like Tritium to Tennessee.”

This is no accident. The push to commit Tennessee’s future to the success of electric vehicles is calculated and intentional.

But it is more than the global ties and the dependency on China that concerns me (as if that’s not enough).

Just before the Ford deal went through,

Please read more

Gary Humble is the founder and executive director of Tennessee Stands, an organization working to secure liberty and hold elected officials accountable to the Constitution through legislation, litigation, and education. Follow Gary @garyhumble and visit www.tennesseestands.org.

2 Comments

  1. Karen Bracken

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