(The Center Square) – VinFast, the Vietnamese electric vehicle company U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper as North Carolina governor said would bring its “crown jewel” for production and good jobs to the state, has lost a $400 million incentive package from Chatham County.
County Manager Bryan Thompson, from an email published by The Carolina Journal, said simply the company failed to meet performance obligations and project deadlines. North Carolina governments’ incentives to VinFast had totaled more than $1.2 billion for a project where the company would invest $4 billion and provide 7,500 jobs.
State taxpayers are protected through the rules of the state’s Job Development Investment Grant. VinFast got a $316.1 million deal on that. The state never pays a nickel in advance; rather, the Commerce Department says explicitly for each one, “Any state payments only occur following performance verification each year by the departments of Commerce and Revenue that the company has met its incremental job creation and investment targets.”
Production originally was scheduled to begin in July 2024; it’s now at least 2028. The $2 billion first phase investment grew to a $4 billion electric vehicle factory and the “crown jewel” of the company’s global expansion.
The automaker without an annual profit since its 2017 founding tapped the brakes, at a minimum, in April 2024 after its December 2023 announcement to reduce square footage on the new plant from 995,500 to 782,255.
Goals for jobs produced has dropped from the original 7,500 to 1,400.
Net losses in full fiscal years since the announcement to come to North Carolina are $9.47 billion. According to its annual financial reports, VinFast had net loss of $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2025, net loss of $3.18 billion in fiscal year 2024, net loss of $2.39 billion in fiscal year 2023 and net loss of $2.11 billion in fiscal year 2022.
Cooper, then a second-term governor, on March 29, 2022, said the record economic development announcement indicated the state was “quickly becoming the center of our country’s emerging, clean energy economy.”
Monday’s decision by the Chatham County commissioners, coupled with VinFast fiscal struggles and May litigation filed by the state against the company for breach of agreements, has since left it an attainable path to be the state’s greatest economic blunder. It would move ahead of an $846 million taxpayer subsidy to Apple in the Research Triangle Park and the $650 million subsidy from the city of Charlotte to billionaire owner Mark Tepper for his NFL Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium renovations.
The carnage includes a house of faith built in 1888, Merry Oaks Baptist Church, demolished in June 2025 along with five businesses and 27 homes through eminent domain to fulfill state Department of Transportation highway plans.
All were part of an estimated $450 million commitment by the state for site preparation, road improvements, rail access, and water and sewer infrastructure.
