Global Subsidy Wars Force US Allies to Pay Up for Chips, EVs

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Biden’s industrial policy has kickstarted a global contest that’s straining alliances, threatening budgets and channeling unprecedented amounts of public cash into private companies.

Late one night in May, some bad news landed in Jason Roe’s inbox. About 60 members of his union, who were putting up steel beams for an electric-vehicle battery plant in the Canadian city of Windsor, were getting laid off.

That came as a shock because the factory, a $4.1 billion joint venture by Stellantis NV and LG Energy Solution Ltd., had been announced with great fanfare by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government only a year earlier — and backed by dollops of public cash. But suddenly the C$1 billion ($759 million) of federal and provincial grants on offer weren’t going to be enough.