ICYMI: Ford’s $3 Billion Michigan Investment and 1,700 Jobs at Risk Under GOP Reconciliation Bill 

Washington, D.C. – Today the Detroit News reported that the Republican reconciliation bill, which repeals tax credits aimed to onshore domestic clean energy manufacturing, “threatens to foul Ford’s $3 billion investment in its home state just 100 miles west of the automaker’s Dearborn headquarters — and undermine the automaker’s strategy to build its electric vehicle future on battery plants in Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky.” The story is a harbinger of hundreds of similar stories to come if the House Republican legislation becomes law.

Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford reiterated the damage the reconciliation bill could pose to major auto manufacturing investments in Michigan and nationwide while speaking at the Mackinac Policy Conference, stating, “as this Big Beautiful Bill makes its way through Congress, there are these production credits up for grabs. We made the decisions we did based on those. We invested based on policy — changing it now isn’t fair.”

Ford’s $3 billion investment in Blue Oval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan is planned to create 1,700 jobs in the state, and heavily relies on the clean energy tax credits to onshore affordable auto manufacturing supply chains. The facility borders Rep. Tom Barrett’s district, who voted for the reconciliation bill last week. 

ICYMI: Detroit News: Howes: House budget bill risks imperiling Ford’s Marshall battery park

Mackinac Island — Ford Motor Co.’s massive BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall and its planned 1,700 jobs could be imperiled if a U.S. House bill barring use of federal tax credits to license Chinese battery technology remains unchanged, two sources familiar with the situation told The Detroit News. 

The proposed policy reversal, driven primarily by hawks in Congress who believe China equals bad, threatens to foul Ford’s $3 billion investment in its home state just 100 miles west of the automaker’s Dearborn headquarters — and undermine the automaker’s strategy to build its electric vehicle future on battery plants in Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky, to name three states. 

“To Ford Motor Company, it is not acceptable to rely on buying batteries from China forever. We’re America’s top auto producer and we’ve always built in America,” the automaker said in a statement. “That is why we’re building a new battery plant in Marshall, Michigan, so battery assembly can be done by American workers right here. The House bill puts this at risk. Congress can make a decision to either force the U.S. to remain dependent on China or enter a new era of American independence and innovation.” 

The new concerns emerge as Michigan’s business and political leaders meet this week at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island amid shifting economic conditions, gyrating markets, and volatile trade and tariffs talks with the world’s leading economies — and an expected appearance here Thursday by Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford and his daughter, Alexandra Ford English, a director of the automaker. 

Like its crosstown competition, Ford used federal production tax credits formed under the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act to invest billions to build battery plants (and one assembly plant) in the United States. Rival General Motors Co. utilized the Biden-era rules, too. Now it plans to import lithium-iron-phosphate batteries (which Ford intends to build in Marshall) for a few years before GM’s U.S. battery plants come online to produce lithium-manganese-rich batteries for a range of EVs. 

“The production credit is critical for our industry, and it will be a significant impact for our industry if it goes away,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in January and reiterated several times since with investors. “Many of our plants in the Midwest that have converted to EVs depend on the production credit. We would have built those factories in other places, but we didn’t.” 

The abrupt federal policy change, an undeniable consequence of last year’s presidential and congressional elections, is a problem that defies an easy solution for the long-lead auto industry. Now, as steel rises from the ground in several states, hiring gets underway and product development schedules are in motion, Congress and the Trump administration are moving the policy goalposts to the detriment of Detroit’s automakers and their path to EV profitability. 

Capital-intensive businesses like automakers, whose leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, are more likely to invest amid reassurances of stability and policy clarity, not disequilibrium and policy reversals that negatively impact sales and profitability. But here we are, an industry needing to make more big bets with a less-than-clear vision of the future. 

The threat of potential damage is real, depending on legislative reconciliation in the U.S. Senate and whether Ford can find a financially viable way to stick to its investment commitments under shifting new rules. Among them are provisions barring companies claiming federal credits from doing business with “foreign entities of concern” owned by or linked to Chinese companies, the Chinese Communist Party or both. 

Second, the sources said, is “expansive” language in the House bill covering components used in battery making that originate in China — language that appears aimed at purging from the North American supply chain any “know-how” derived from Chinese firms. The problem is that Chinese technology now forms the core of the electric vehicle global ecosystem, and separating from it anytime soon is likely to prove difficult. 

Ford’s assessment of the bill’s impact: Without a licensing deal with Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. of China to build lithium-iron-phosphate batteries in Marshall, the batteries would cost at least $1,200 more per unit, the sources said, and likely force the automaker to buy batteries from a Chinese supplier.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress theoretically insist they are seeking to avoid — namely, creating policy that perversely incentivizes American automakers to buy components from foreign suppliers, chiefly China. Yet that’s what Ford and other automakers see in the House bill now headed to the Senate: a welter of conflicting policy signals that push in a different direction than intended. 

“There’s some concern that language” is contained in the House bill “related to production tax credits — and licensing of CATL that only affects Ford,” said Jim Durian, CEO of the Marshall Area Economic Development Alliance. “We don’t want to do anything that would negatively affect the plant. These are Ford jobs and a Ford plant.”