The automotive arm of a large Chinese corporation, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, is looking to gain a foothold in the U.S. market and may get a boost from President Joe Biden’s administration.

A Chinese conglomerate is looking to gain a foothold in the U.S. auto market and may get a boost from President Joe Biden’s administration.

Polestar — founded in 2017 by the Chinese corporation Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and its Swedish subsidiary Volvo — has most recently made inroads with the U.S. auto industry by becoming the latest in a series of auto companies to commit to using U.S.-based Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS), a standardized charging port configuration for electric cars, according to Reuters. In addition to utilizing the NACS — which was partially subsidizedby the Biden administration — Polestar is hoping that some of the all-electric SUVs made at its upcoming South Carolina factory will qualify for a $7,500 consumer tax credit offered through President Joe Biden’s cornerstone climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which subsidize the purchase of electric vehicles, Yahoo Finance reported in late March.

The company will first launch a premium version of its upcoming Polestar 3 SUV in mid-2024, starting at roughly $84,000, but that price point would surpass the $80,000 threshold for SUVs to qualify for the credit, Yahoo Finance reported. To take advantage of the tax credits, Polestar plans to launch a cheaper variant with fewer amenities soon after production begins.

The Biden administration has made competition with China a priority as relations between the two nations have soured in recent months. While IRA tax credits do not directly finance the Chinese conglomerate, the administration expects that tax credits will help sales of qualifying vehicles — such as the upcoming Polestar 3 variant.

“These commitments are part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to spur domestic manufacturing, strengthen supply chains, boost U.S. competitiveness and create good-paying jobs,” reads a White House fact sheet. The statement continues, arguing that the IRA “adds and expands tax credits for purchases of new and used EVs—helping bring the benefits of clean energy to communities across the nation.”

The more expensive Polestar 3 variant could still qualify for the $7,500 tax credit through a provision that allows some leased electric vehicles to qualify for the credit regardless of country of origin or cost, Yahoo Finance reported. Foreign automakers lobbied heavily for this exemption, and some analysts expect it to make leasing the primary way U.S. consumers acquire electric vehicles, at least in the near future, Bloomberg reported.

“It will be a big milestone for our brand,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said in a 2021 interview with CNBC, referring to the South Carolina factory. “The expression of the car will be so much Polestar and show where our brand is going in the future ahead.”

Geely chairman Li Shufu is a rare Chinese business leader who does not have membership in the Chinese Communist Party, but does serve as a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which describes itself as a “national political consultative body” advising the Chinese government. The firm’s $1.8 billion purchase of Volvo from Ford in 2010 was largely financed by low-interest loans from a trio of Chinese cities, where the company would eventually locate a pair of factories and a technology center, according to Reuters.

Chinese electric vehicle firms have increasingly been making progress in both Europe and the U.S., leveraging their sheer dominance in mineral supply chains and technical know-how in electrical vehicles to muscle into Western markets, Politico reported on Monday. Roughly 5.4 million electric vehicles, around two-thirds of the global total, were registered in China last year, and 19% of all cars sold in China last year were fully electric.

Chinese automakers “are leveraging their specific product know-how over incumbent European brands that employ a lot of people to make engines,” an anonymous auto manager told Politico. “[Volkswagen] would need to lay off half its staff” to meet the efficiency of its Chinese competitors, the manager added.

Several major clean energy projects — particularly in battery manufacturing and power generation — looking to take advantage of IRA tax credits rely on Chinese technology or intellectual property.

Geely, Polestar and The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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Both Shell and fellow U.K. energy firm BP opted against further cuts to oil production recently, in a bid to restore investor confidence as their renewable ventures struggled, according to Bloomberg. While the moves were met with criticism from climate-focused investors — activist investors and protestors attempted to storm the stage at Shell’s annual shareholder meeting in late May — the companies are likely to stay the course despite criticism, thanks to the reliability of oil and gas to drive profits despite the emergence of green energy, Dan Kish, senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF.

“Smart energy executives looking at the long term recognize that politics are fleeting,” Kish said. “Politicians may be flighty and distracted by today’s shiny objects, but real business sense combined with a knowledge of engineering and physics shows that real energy makes good business because it is what people need and want.”

Shell CEO Wael Sawan described his company’s shift as a “fundamental culture change” during a Wednesday presentation intended to draw investors, especially American ones, to support the company, The Wall Street Journal reported. Shell performed poorly in 2022 compared to U.S. titans Exxon Mobil and Chevron in 2022, and Sawan has made playing catch up a priority.

BP made a similar decision, opting to increase investments in oil and gas while slowing its advancement toward green alternatives.

“At the end of the day, we’re responding to what society wants,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said.

Ryan Yonk, senior research faculty at the American Institute for Economic Research, described many green investments and climate commitments as a sort of “green-washing” that companies are more likely to view as a “cost of doing business” as opposed to a genuine driver of profits, in a statement to the DCNF. BP saw shares surge more than 15% in the days following its February announcement that it would cut just 25% of its hydrocarbon output by 2030, as opposed to its original target of 40%, according to Reuters.

“The profitability of these types of endeavors is generally much lower than market-driven innovation and growth because they are defensive in nature and driven not by consumer demand but by either actual regulatory action or the expectation that it will occur,” Yonk said. “Fossil fuels are currently, and the evidence suggests they will be for the foreseeable future a significant and important part of energy production in the US and across the world.”

While political pressure may have pushed companies towards green projects in the past, the current political landscape is much more amenable to oil and gas, Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine set off an energy crisis in both the U.S. and Europe, giving companies a “strong incentive” to pump more oil while providing them the political cover to be “more candid” about the necessity of such investments, Ebell said.

“The EU’s oil majors have an even harder time than America’s trying to remain politically correct while continuing to produce the energy the world needs and make sufficient profits to satisfy shareholders and invest in new production,” Ebell told the DCNF. “They are faced with the reality that renewables produce little energy at a high cost.”

While Shell re-committed to its target of net-zero emissions by 2050 in a Wednesday press release, it also said in a footnote that such a change was dependent on societal factors. There would be “significant risk that Shell may not meet this target” if society at large had not made a shift to net zero by then, the company said.

Shell and BP did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.

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Ocasio-Cortez currently serves as the ranking member of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, establishing her as a prime candidate to head the committee and take steps to advance a progressive climate agenda in the event Democrats take control of the House, according to E&E News. The New York congresswoman recently reintroduced the Green New Deal — which has been harshly criticized as radical and expensive by Republicans since she first introduced it in 2019 — as progressive allies Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced an accompanying health care package, dubbed the Green New Deal for Health.

“A lot of our victories have already begun, for example, by breaking off some of the pieces [of the Green New Deal] and incorporating it in different areas of must-pass legislation including the Inflation Reduction Act,” Ocasio-Cortez told the outlet. Her office, alongside that of Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, maintains an ongoing document that tracks the ways in which the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have implemented core tenets of the Green New Deal.

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the U.S. is expected to undergo a significant drawdown in coal-fired power even as China continues to aggressively bring new coal plants online. Analysts at Goldman Sachs now estimate that the bill will cost roughly $1.2 trillion in subsidies for green energy projects over the next ten years, more than three times the government’s initial estimated cost of $370 billion.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York — the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee — told the outlet that he never believed that what was once a fringe element in the Democratic Party “would ever become inside-baseball people.” A Democratic takeover of the House in 2024 would see Bowman, as well as other climate-focused progressives like Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri and Khanna, in high-ranking positions alongside Ocasio-Cortez, E&E News reported.

“The key to Congress is you just have to win, and then you have to stick around a bit,” Khanna, the former chair of the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on the Environment, told E&E News. “And the more progressive classes we get, and the more progressives stick it out in the House, the more power we’ll build.”

If she chaired the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, Ocasio-Cortez would have oversight powers over energy production, mining and drilling on federal lands. The Biden administration has in recent months taken sweeping action to block mining and drilling projects, while simultaneously encouraging conservation efforts on federal lands.

The office of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].