|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
by WILL FOLKS
***
This week’s controversial decision by crony capitalist carmaker Scout Motors – a subsidiary of über-woke Volkswagen – to locate its corporate headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina has sparked outrage in South Carolina.
Palmetto State leaders doled out a staggering $1.3 billion in taxpayer-funded incentives to Scout two years ago when the company pledged to build a manufacturing facility in Blythewood, S.C. A whopping $400 million of that package was cold hard cash.
While Scout executives insist this facility will one day employ 4,600 people, any rational assessment of the current state of the electric vehicle (EV) market points to that being a pipe dream. Also, the company’s decision to locate 1,200 high-paying corporate jobs (with a reported average salary of $172,878) in the Queen City over the next five years – dissing South Carolina for this $207 million investment – has rubbed Palmetto State leaders the wrong way.
“This is one of the largest job creation announcements in Charlotte over the past decade,” a news release from the city boasted, noting Scout’s new headquarters at the Commonwealth development will “serve as the home base for executive leadership, research and development, finance, IT, sales, marketing and other key corporate functions.”
Economic development experts have slammed S.C. governor Henry McMaster (Scout’s biggest cheerleader), state legislative leaders and state commerce officials for failing to land Scout’s corporate headquarters – or more accurately, for failing to tie this part of the company’s expansion plans to the original corporate welfare package it doled out two years ago.
***
“We gave away the farm to them,” a lawmaker who voted in favor of the original $1.3 billion deal told FITSNews confidentially. “The least we could’ve done was make these corporate jobs part of the deal.”
South Carolina’s offer to Scout was obscenely generous under any circumstances – but it was downright insane given the lack of interest from other states in the company’s manufacturing project.
In February 2024, reporter Rick Brundrett of The (Columbia, S.C.) Nerve published a report which concluded the Palmetto State’s incentives package was “seven times more than what officials in Mississippi… were willing to offer in state grant funding through special legislation.”
Per Brundrett, Mississippi’s offer – the only other serious bid for the Scout facility – was a comparatively modest $150 million in “state grant funding.”
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, Scout was “deep in site selection” at a location in Charleston, S.C. Specifically, company leaders met with city, county and state officials about a spot at Magnolia Landing – a new development on the banks of the Ashley River.
***
***
Company representatives questioned all three governments about available incentives, with the state making it clear “more Scout money wasn’t on the table.”
“The state had nothing to offer,” a source who participated in the discussions confirmed.
County and city sources familiar with the negotiations said they were “hamstrung” by the state’s refusal to budge – arguing Charleston was Scout’s “preferred location” and that the state’s unwillingness to contribute to a package kept the city from “pushing this across the finish line.”
“The state lost this deal for the Lowcountry,” one Charleston economic development source told FITSNews on condition of anonymity.
“Their CEO wanted to live in Charleston,” another source familiar with the negotiations confirmed.
Commerce officials who spoke with FITSNews on condition of anonymity pushed back against those characterizations. They insisted Scout was only interested in coming to Charleston if the Palmetto State rewrote its auto sales laws to give the company an unfair competitive advantage over other manufacturers – and if lawmakers awarded the facility what amounted to additional taxpayer largesse. Specifically, Scout wanted $10 million in one-time funding for “EV training” at South Carolina’s technical college system and nearly $100 million in annual funding for EV industry scholarships from the S.C. Education Lottery.
“This was never about the location of Scout’s corporate headquarters,” one Commerce source told us. “This was about Scout trying to leverage the state to get what it wanted.”
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we continue to dig into the fallout from yet another massive crony capitalist fail in the Palmetto State…
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
6 comments
How is this thing a “diss?” A sophisticated international company who, on the first go-around got the far upper hand on a deal wanted a similar deal on the second go- around. And what – we somehow have some right to just expect them to pick us on the second deal because of how much we ponied up in the first? What kind of second-grade sandbox polly-annish crap is that? It’s our own leadership’s fault that we gave away the store on the first deal, and thankfully they realized that afterwards and declined to take a second trip to the woodshed because the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. I don’t expect multi-national corporations with uber-liberal cony-capitalist leadership to have a sense of obligation or honor to our state because they got the upper hand on a previous deal. What I expect is for our leadership to aggressively pursue OUR citizens interests in a manner that also doesn’t undermine real, above-board competitive free market capitalism.
This was a very biased and dopey report using the term woke for a giant corporation is Lame not letting Scout sel without brick and mortar dealerships was obviously a nod to the auto association’s Lobbyists
VW owns a bunch of niche European”luxury brands” that as a group don’t make a bunch of money (at least they aren’t right now). They’ve got to watch the bottom line and Charlotte, will from a corporate standpoint be a cheaper place to operate from, if for no other reason than Charlotte Douglas. Plus think of all the other benefits, the Lynx train to know where (aka, the strangulation train), the 77/85 interchange and the fabulous Panthers and Hornets…
This is what happens when unqualified bumpkins make deals with multi-national corporations with an army of lawyers.
Hey Murrell, you and your buddy Henry got bent and used our tax money in the process. And youwonder why citizens call you the swamp
“if the Palmetto State rewrote its auto sales laws to give the company an unfair competitive advantage over other manufacturers”
What Scout and Tesla and other progressive manufacturers want is the ability to sell directly to the consumer. Rewriting state law would not prevent any car manufacturer from doing just that, but a manufacturers agreement with their dealer network might.
I thought this site, and Republicans, were all about “letting the market decide the winners and losers”. Why is this state, in 2025, preventing any manufacturer from selling goods directly to the consumer.
How much money have Republicans taken form the auto dealers lobbyists and PACs?