MEDIA ADVISORY

For Immediate Release
April 4, 2025

CONTACT:
Dede Laugesen
info@PresentDangerChina.org

Modern Minutemen:
Michigan Patriots Thwart Chinese Battery Plant

WASHINGTON, D.C.— On February 21, 2025, President Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum unveiling an “America First Investment Policy.” While much of it addressed “outbound” U.S. investment in Communist China and other “foreign adversaries,” it also said the following about “inbound” investment here by such countries in general and the PRC specifically:

The United States will use all necessary legal instruments, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), to restrict PRC-affiliated persons from investing in United States technology, critical infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture, energy, raw materials, or other strategic sectors. My Administration will protect United States farmland and real estate near sensitive facilities. (Emphasis added.)

As it happens, an egregious Chinese Communist Party investment inside the U.S. energy sector has just come a cropper – not as a result of the President’s initiative, but thanks to the tenacious opposition of modern-day Minutemen who – almost precisely 250 years after the immortal Battles of Concord and Lexington against British invaders – stopped, at least temporarily, the construction of an electric battery manufacturing plant in upstate Michigan.

The next Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) webinar today from 1-2:15 p.m. ET will examine the valiant effort by local citizens, activists and patriots and some of their elected representatives that overcame official complicity, indifference and corrupt malfeasance to induce a CCP company known as Gotion High-tech to suspend its application for the required construction-related permits.

We will examine as well the prospects for yet-another such PRC battery-manufacturing facility in Michigan involving what the Pentagon calls a “Chinese military company operating in the United States” known as CATL. It is actually at odds with President Trump’s America First Investment Policy with respect to both inbound and outbound investing. Four of Wall Street’s largest investment banks — Jamie Dimon’s JP Morgan, Brian Moynihan’s Bank of America, Ted Pick’s Morgan Stanley and David Solomon’s Goldman Sachs – are hoping shortly to raise at least $7.7 billion or more for CATL from U.S. and other foreign investors without disclosing allegations that it engages in the exploitation of slave-labor and is athwart a presidential policy directive.

Register at PresentDangerChina.org.

WHAT: A CPDC webinar | “Modern Minutemen: Michigan Patriots Thwart Chinese Battery Plant”

WHEN: 1:00-2:15 p.m. ET, Friday, April 4, 2025

WHO:

• Moderator: Frank Gaffney, Founder and Executive Chairman, Center for Security Policy; Vice Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger: China

Panelists:

• John Moolenaar, Member of Congress from Michigan; Chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party
  • Topic: We Must Stop Funding Our Demise: The Chinese Communist Party, Wall Street and the State of Michigan” (Invited)
• Ron Armstrong, President, Armstrong Display; President, Stand Up Michigan; Member, Frontliners grassroots activists
  Topic: “On the Frontlines in Michigan: Americans Standing Up to the Chinese Communists and Their Friends”
• Ormand Hook, Military veteran; Retired school psychologist; Community organizer in Big Rapids, Michigan
  Topic: “Taking on Gotion and Company: Lessons for Resisting the CCP and Holding Our Government Accountable”
• Dave Walsh, Former senior executive, Westinghouse; former President and CEO, Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas; Managing Director, Takotagroup LLC
  Topic: “President Trump is Right: The Chinese Communist Party has No Business Being in our Energy Sector”
• Joe Gebbia, Founder and President, State Shield
  Topic: “Fighting, and Beating, the Chinese Communist Party’ Penetration of America at the State Level” (Invited)

HOW: Register at PresentDangerChina.org.

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CONTACT:  Dede Laugesen info@PresentDangerChina.org_______
Read More at Committee on the Present Danger: China