Cooper lavished Boviet Solar with millions of dollars in taxpayer funds
A Chinese solar company whose wholly owned American subsidiary won millions of dollars in tax incentives from former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper (D.) in 2024 is now seeking a full exit from its U.S. business in what one domestic advocacy group said is the direct result of President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Cooper, now the Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s open Senate seat, rolled out the welcome mat for Boviet Solar in April 2024, gifting the company’s CEO with a hand-made pot emblazoned with the North Carolina seal during a televised press conference in which he touted a $32.6 million state and local incentive package to help the firm open a factory in the state. Boviet, a company registered in Vietnam, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Boway Group, a multibillion-dollar Chinese firm whose board of directors is stacked with members of the Chinese Communist Party, including its chairman, Xie Shicai, who served in the 13th National People’s Congress. But Cooper glossed over Boviet’s ties to China when he announced the subsidy package, referring to the firm instead as an “international renewable energy company” that would create 900 new jobs in North Carolina.
And then Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, which included a measure barring Chinese-owned businesses from accessing Inflation Reduction Act subsidies. Now, the Boway Group wants nothing more to do with Boviet and its taxpayer-subsidized North Carolina factory, which opened in April 2025. The Boway Group is reportedly in negotiations to sell Boviet to an Indian company for $254 million after filing a disclosure with the Shanghai Stock Exchange saying Trump’s policies would have led to unacceptable losses.
“Governor Cooper wrongly welcomed China’s state-subsidized solar industry into North Carolina—and even applauded the use of taxpayer dollars to support it,” said Nick Iacovella, the executive vice president for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a domestic manufacturing advocacy group that accused Cooper in 2024 of forcing North Carolina taxpayers to subsidize China’s solar industry through the subsidy package. “Now, thanks to the Trump administration’s policies and the foreign entity of concern restrictions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Boviet Solar is being forced to unwind its Chinese ownership and exit. That outcome validates exactly what we warned about: These investments were never about creating American jobs—they were a backdoor for CCP-controlled firms to access U.S. taxpayer dollars and penetrate the domestic market.”
“Governor Cooper should acknowledge that mistake and be just as enthusiastic about seeing Chinese ownership shown the door,” Iacovella told the Washington Free Beacon.
Boviet had been investigated by the Biden Commerce Department in 2023 for allegedly shipping Chinese-manufactured solar products through Vietnam in a scheme to circumvent U.S. anti-dumping duties—Boviet once boasted on its website in 2017 that it “strategically” selected Vietnam to serve as its home base in order to evade U.S. import duties, noting that the country “is not a U.S. listed anti-Dumping and Countervailing region.”
Though Boviet was cleared in that investigation, in April 2025, the Trump administration imposed a 160 percent tariff on Boviet’s Vietnamese imports.
Cooper stands by his decision to dole out taxpayer subsidies to Boviet, his campaign told the Free Beacon when reached for comment.
“Roy Cooper successfully recruited major companies to our state to create thousands of jobs, lower energy bills, and put money in the pockets of working families while making North Carolina the best state for business three out of the last four years,” a Cooper campaign spokesman said.
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