(FreedomBeacon.com)- In October, the Department of Energy announced that it was awarding a $200 million grant to the Texas-based lithium battery company Microvast Holdings to build a battery separator facility in Tennessee. However, the DOE failed to mention that Microvast operates primarily from China and is under scrutiny by US financial regulators.
While the Department of Energy described Microvast as a “majority U.S.-owned company, traded on NASDAQ” with headquarters in Stafford, Texas, the company’s financial records show that it primarily operates out of China.
Microvast was recently added to the Securities and Exchange Commission watchlist of Chinese companies that face delisting from NASDAQ for failing to comply with US auditing requirements.
Microvast’s DOE award raises questions about how closely the administration is adhering to the $1.2 billion bipartisan Infrastructure Law and demonstrates the challenges from the Biden administration’s push for a green energy transition.
The Infrastructure spending was designed to boost US-based companies while expanding the domestic clean energy supply chain which currently relies heavily on China.
According to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, the Microvast award highlights the need for additional congressional oversight in the disbursement of money from the infrastructure law.
Rubio told the Washington Free Beacon that as the law states, the Energy Department should avoid funding projects that “use battery material supplied by or originating from a foreign entity of concern,” which includes companies “subject to the jurisdiction or direction” of China.
Rubio blasted the Department of Energy for awarding the grant to “a company whose operations are based in China that refuses to comply with American securities rules,” calling it “crazy.”
Worse still, Rubio explained, since Microvast operates from China, any new technology developed through this grant “is almost certainly going to benefit China.”
Rubio said this is just one more example of how the Biden administration fails to understand “the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”
