Michigan offered $6B; company said ‘no’

A cash offer of $1.1 billion wasn’t enough to lure a company to a Genesee County location near Flint.

When auto companies chose to spend about $11 billion building plants in the American South in 2021, Michigan, stung by headlines blaming the state for losing this business, gathered a taxpayer-funded honeypot. But years later, that also has failed to attract a buyer.

Michigan gave $259 million in site prep for the Genesee County spot. It offered $6 billion to Western Digital Technologies, according to an August 2024 letter of intent signed by Michigan Economic Development Corporation CEO Quentin Messer and Dan Steere, Western Digital's senior vice president of corporate development and strategy.

In return, the company would invest $63 billion between 2024 and 2045 and create 9,400 jobs.

Michigan offered:

• $1.175 billion in a cash grant

• $750 million in cash grants

• $416 million in a sales and use tax exemption

• A 50-year tax exemption from state education taxes, personal and real property taxes, state essential service assessments, and local income taxes

$261 million in site prep

• $250 million for workforce development

• $15 million cash grant from the Michigan Department of Transportation.

It didn’t work.

The would-be economic breakthrough was not the only failed experiment in which state officials sought to bring about a large number of new jobs. Only one of every 11 jobs promised by Michigan politicians and public officials in business subsidy announcements actually gets created, according to a study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Auto jobs have moved South. Despite Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s claim that Michigan created 38,000 auto jobs since 2019, the state is down 9,000 auto and auto parts manufacturing jobs over her tenure, a 5.6% decrease, James Hohman, the director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told CapCon.

“This deal would have been among the largest corporate welfare deals ever made,” Hohman told CapCon in an email. “Deals like this routinely fail to deliver on their expectations and only deliver 9% of the jobs announced, on average.”

Read it for yourself:

Project Grit LOI - Fully Executed by mcclallen on Scribd

The Flint & Genesee Economic Alliance is still trying to lure a buyer for the Mundy megasite, which spans over 1,000 acres.

It’s still demolishing homes and is trying to pay $40 million to demolish and rebuild an elementary school elsewhere, all for a site without a buyer, CapCon reported in July.