WASHINGTON — The fundraising committee for GOP President Donald Trump's inauguration reported accepting $1 million from Gotion Inc., a China-connected battery manufacturer that Michigan Republicans repeatedly attacked Democrats for being tied to during the 2024 campaign.

Trump's inaugural committee released a list of $239 million in accepted contributions Sunday night, revealing Gotion gave $1 million on Jan. 8. Michigan corporations and business executives donated more than $6 million to Trump's second inauguration, according to the disclosure, practically tripling the amount raised from Michigan for the Republican's first inauguration.

Top Michigan Republicans have opposed plans by Gotion, with the help of financial incentives from state government, to construct a battery parts plant in Green Township on the outskirts of Big Rapids. Vice President JD Vance campaigned in Green Township on Aug. 27, where he criticized the use of state taxpayer funding pushed by the Democratic administration of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for the Gotion project because of its connections to China.

Trump himself blasted the Gotion project in a social media post on Aug. 20, 141 days before his inaugural committee accepted money from the company.

"The Gotion plant would be very bad for the State and our Country," Trump said in August. "It would put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing."

During the fall campaign, the National Republican Congressional Committee attacked Democratic U.S. House candidate Curtis Hertel Jr. for accepting campaign contributions from individuals the committee described as "Gotion’s foreign agents." And Hertel's opponent, now-U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Charlotte, said the fact that Hertel took money "from foreign agents on behalf of Gotion should disqualify him from Congress.”

Asked about the donation to the Trump committee, Barrett campaign spokesman Jason Cabel Roe said Monday that Barrett had criticized Hertel for signing a nondisclosure agreement with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. about the Gotion project.

Trump's inaugural committee didn't immediately respond Monday to a question about why it accepted the money.

When asked about the contribution to Trump's inauguration, Joe Cella, a Republican who served as ambassador to Fiji in the first Trump administration and is one of the most vocal critics of the Gotion project in Michigan, said, "I really have no reaction."

Chuck Thelen, vice president of North American manufacturing for Gotion Inc., did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment about the company's donation to Trump's inaugural committee.

On Aug. 22, then-Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra penned a column in The Detroit News with the headline "Republicans say no to Gotion." Hoekstra is now Trump's ambassador to Canada.

"Republican leadership is the only way to fight back," Hoekstra wrote. "This November, say no to Gotion."

Democrats strike back

Gotion Inc. is an American subsidiary of Gotion High Tech, which is based in China and whose articles of association require that the company "carry out party activities in accordance with the constitution of the Communist Party of China." Gotion's U.S. subsidiary has been incorporated in California since 2014.

Supporters of the project in northern Michigan have said it would create 2,350 jobs there. Michigan lawmakers approved $175 million in taxpayer incentives for the project in August 2023.

On Monday, Hertel, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said Michigan Republicans "built a campaign around accusing people of taking money from businesses associated with the Chinese Communist Party when in reality, their dear leader Donald Trump was doing it all along.

"We already knew that the MIGOP is intimately familiar with hypocrisy, but this is a new low, even for them," Hertel added. "We are waiting with bated breath for the same condemnation, congressional hearings and press releases from these Republicans calling out Trump for his ties to China.”

Gotion's website describes the company as one that "aims to innovate and create the next generation of battery technology." In previous interviews, Gotion's Thelen has noted the American subsidiary of Gotion's board is one-third German, one-third American and one-third Chinese.

“It’s not state-owned, it’s not state-run,” Thelen told The News in May 2024.

Michigan donors

Overall, Michigan businesses and individuals donated more than $6 million to support festivities for Trump's inauguration in January, according to the newly released disclosures.

The group responsible for organizing the festivities, Trump Vance Inaugural Committee Inc., raised $239 million. The amount more than doubled the previous record Trump set for his first inauguration in 2017.

The donors listing Michigan addresses were mostly well-known political heavyweights and multibillion-dollar corporations, though some lesser-known construction and real estate businesses also spent big to celebrate Trump's return to the White House. Donations from the Great Lakes State were more than twice as high as those from the previous two inaugurations for Trump in 2017 ($2 million) and former President Joe Biden in 2021 ($2.3 million).

The biggest donors this time — each giving $1 million — were the Hazel Park-based electronic cigarette company Breeze Smoke LLC, automakers General Motors Co. and Stellantis North America, Republican megadonors from the DeVos family, and the duo of construction tycoon John Rakolta Jr. and his wife, Terry.

"I proudly support President Trump," Rakolta Jr. said in a Monday text message. "At a time when America faces unprecedented challenges, he’s the only leader with the courage and clarity to take them on.”

Rakolta is the chairman of Detroit-based Walbridge and previously served as Trump's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. He is a longtime GOP benefactor whom the president has referred to as a "friend" in the automotive plant construction business. The two appeared together on stage following an October speech hosted by the Detroit Economic Club, when Rakolta asked then-candidate Trump a series of questions.

"Mr. President, thank you," Rakolta said as the question-and-answer session ended. "I'm looking forward to all of those auto plants I'm going to be building back here in Michigan in the Midwest."

Construction, automotive and real estate businesses accounted for a significant share of the Michigan inauguration donors. Midwest Steel executive Thomas Broad; Schostak Brothers & Co., the family-owned real estate development firm of former Michigan GOP chairman Bobby Schostak; as well as real estate developers Matt Lester and Ron Boji, each gave $100,000.

Ford Motor Co. joined other automotive giants like GM, Stellantis, Toyota Motor Corp. and Hyundai by pledging $1 million. The Dearborn-based automaker's full donation did not appear on a filing submitted Sunday night, though a spokesperson said the company's commitment is unchanged and is currently being processed.

Trump, since taking office on Jan. 20, has rolled out policies that promise to fundamentally alter the U.S. auto industry and sectors that touch it. The president has insisted that higher tariffs on trade partners will end the decades-long decline of American and Michigan manufacturing jobs.

Economists and industry observers, however, have warned that Trump's boosted import taxes — and the chaos and uncertainty surrounding specific rates, how long they will last and which countries will be affected — are paralyzing new investment decisions and fail to address labor issues that limit domestic manufacturing capacity.

'Ridiculous claims'

Gotion was one of the main topics of debate in the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Michigan, where Republican former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake Township repeatedly accused Democratic then-U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Holly of being tied to the company.

Rogers claimed that Slotkin had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Gotion as it pursued its project in northern Michigan. Slotkin’s agreement was with a state agency, the Michigan Economic Development Corp., not Gotion itself.

On social media on Oct. 23, Rogers said Slotkin “took campaign contributions from registered Chinese foreign agents.”

The Rogers campaign didn’t respond to a question about whether he had any comment on the $1 million Gotion gave to Trump’s inaugural committee.

But Austin Cook, who served as Slotkin’s campaign spokesman in 2024, said Rogers and other Republicans had “knowingly lied about the Gotion issue for the last two years even as it was debunked by fact-checkers and investigative journalists.”

“If Rogers believed a single word of the ridiculous claims he made about Elissa Slotkin, he’ll condemn President Trump for taking this money and demand he return it,” Cook said. “If he stays silent, it proves that he's just another politician willing to say anything and whose word means nothing.”

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