Vice President Kamala Harris's billion-dollar Clean School Bus program provided funding to Chinese EV manufacturer BYD Company's subsidiary in the United States, according to federal filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Months later, the subsidiary's top executive, a Chinese national, wired $50,000 in support of what is now Harris's presidential campaign.
BYD Americas was selected in late 2022 to receive $395,000 under the administration's Clean School Bus program, which was spearheaded by Harris and EPA administrator Michael Regan, EPA documents show. That funding was disbursed in May 2023, six months before Li's donations to the Biden-Harris campaign, according to the EPA.
The company applied for federal funding to supply an electric bus to Princeton Joint Unified School District located in northern California.
It remains unclear whether the company is directly providing its buses to school districts that applied for program funding from the EPA. "We are currently not aware of other school districts that may be purchasing buses from this company under the Clean School Bus program," EPA spokesman Remmington Belford said in a statement to the Free Beacon.
BYD Americas's president, Ke Li, then donated $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund (now the Harris Victory Fund), $18,400 to the Democratic National Committee, but earmarked for the Biden Victory Fund, and a maximum individual contribution of $6,600 to the Biden campaign (now the Harris campaign), according to FEC filings reviewed by the Free Beacon. Li made each contribution on the same day: Nov. 14, 2023. President Joe Biden's $96 million campaign war chest was transferred to Harris's campaign in July after Biden withdrew from the presidential race.
In BYD Company's most recent annual report, Li is identified as a Chinese national. Other company documents indicate she is a Chinese national with a "right of abode" in the United States. While federal law prohibits foreign nationals from making campaign donations, there is an exception for individuals with a green card.
Li's donations are evidence that Chinese electric vehicle industry officials support the Biden-Harris administration's agenda, even as the administration seeks to curb reliance on Chinese companies for green energy technologies. They also put a spotlight on the taxpayer funds the administration steered to BYD Americas as part of the push to rapidly scale up EV and electric bus production.
BYD is one of a handful of Chinese automakers that Congress began probing last month over potential espionage concerns. The company was also targeted by a provision in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which prohibits federal funding from being used to procure buses manufactured by a company that "is owned or controlled by, is a subsidiary of, or is otherwise related legally or financially to a corporation based in" China.
That provision—designed to block Chinese companies from benefiting both from subsidies awarded by the Chinese government and the U.S. government—applies, however, to programs administered by the Transportation Department. BYD Americas issued a press release last year publicly offering its products for the Clean School Bus program. "We are happy to help children across the U.S. breathe cleaner air," said Patrick Duan, the company's senior vice president.
BYD Americas didn't respond to a request for comment.
The Clean School Bus program was created three years ago as a provision of the 2021 infrastructure bill, which put aside $5 billion for the EPA to distribute in the form of rebates and grants over the course of five years. Since the initial announcement in 2022, when BYD was selected for funding, the EPA has selected hundreds of school districts to receive nearly $3 billion to deploy electric buses.
A recent report published by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee concluded the program was "overall a failure," in part because it serves as a subsidy for products with ties to China. The report also found the program is costly, vulnerable to fraud, and improperly pushes school districts to adopt inefficient technology.
BYD Americas operates a plant in Lancaster, California, where it assembles electric bus and coach models. Its parent company, BYD Company, operates dozens more plants worldwide, and it manufactures batteries and passenger EVs among other technologies. Although BYD Company doesn't export any passenger EVs to the United States, it is planning to open a plant in Mexico to supply EVs to the American market, Reuters reported in May.
In recent months, BYD Company has emerged as the world's largest manufacturer of EVs, surpassing Tesla, which held that title for years. The Chinese company delivered more than 500,000 battery-electric vehicles during the final quarter of 2023, more than the 484,000 sold by Tesla, marking the first time Tesla was dethroned as the top EV maker in the world, the Financial Times reported.
BYD's growing market share of the global EV market exemplifies China's continued dominance of both the EV industry and the green energy sector more broadly.
According to the International Energy Agency, for example, China produces about 75 percent of all lithium-ion batteries, a key component of EVs, worldwide. China also boasts 70 percent of production capacity for cathodes and 85 percent for anodes, two key parts of such batteries, the data showed.
"Just at a time when American producers have made our country energy independent in oil and natural gas, Biden/Harris are pursuing energy policies that would make us dependent on China," Kathleen Sgamma, the president of industry group the Western Energy Alliance, told the Free Beacon.
The Biden-Harris administration's "record of favoring technologies dependent on China that would be disastrous for the American worker, economy, and energy supply makes you wonder about their loyalties," she added.
The Harris campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.