Repost from downstairs because I think what has happened to NPR (and to PBS) should be an example of how easy it is to color a story with just a few choice words:

Here’s the important part of the NPR story that NPR did not see fit to expand:

But that’s not what happened. Instead of the batteries becoming the next great American success story, the warehouse is now shuttered and empty. All the employees who worked there were laid off. And more than 5,200 miles away, a Chinese company is hard at work making the batteries in Dalian, China.

The company, UniEnergy, is a subsidiary of a German company in the same business:

UniEnergy Technologies

The bottom line is that the corporate bottom line of the German parent company is likely what did in the manufacture of the proposed batteries in WI.

The DoE gives out grants. Companies take the money (as do non-profit concerns.) The DoE cannot make a company make a product.

To do so is indeed an element of fascism.

The US only does that in war time.

The NPR story colors what happens, coloring according to the grievance theater of the right-wing.

In reality, this is another example where there was not a US business to go forward.

The German company runs the US subsidiary but that again may only exist to harvest grant money from the US.