Story by Matthew Langston and Tyler Musialowski
North Carolina Sen. Dan Bishop, the Republican candidate for the 9th Congressional District, shared a Fox News story on May 30 on his Facebook page that accused Democratic candidate Dan McCready of investing in a solar energy company that outsourced production to China.
This drew our attention because McCready has previously stressed a stronger stance against China on issues such as trade while critics charged his actions do not support this platform.
In a McCready campaign advertisement from October 2018, he asserted that his goal is to “get tough with China until they agree to fair trade deals.”
But some clarification is warranted.
The investments referenced in the Fox News article come from Double Time Capital, a North Carolina-based investment firm that McCready co-founded in 2013.
In an exclusive statement provided by the McCready campaign, he explained what his company does.
“My company invests in solar farms, we do not build them,” according to the statement. “We play no role in engineering, design or equipment selection.”
McCready’s firm reportedly invested with Durham-based Strata Solar and has worked with Strata since at least January 2017.
However, in the McCready statement, he denied investing in Strata and said, “To be clear, we never invested in Strata Solar, we never outsourced a single job, and there is no Huawei equipment in our solar farms.”
McCready said his company’s investments go toward solar projects – not the solar companies themselves – which explains his reasoning for rejecting Double Time’s alleged connection to Strata.
While McCready said it did not invest in the company Strata itself, Double Time has invested in some of the projects Strata built, according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
“Double Time has invested money in solar developed only by N.C.-based companies,” a January 2017 article reads. “Much of that has been invested in projects by Strata Solar…”
According to a source close to McCready, Double Time continues to have investments in Strata-built farms but has not made any new investments in Strata-built projects since 2016. That source’s claim has not been independently verified.
It is also worth exploring the connections between Strata and several Chinese companies.
Strata Solar has a documented history of working with various Chinese companies to carry out its solar projects. For example, Strata teamed with the Shenzhen-based solar panel company BYD to buy BYD’s solar panels beginning in 2013.
Strata’s partnership with Chinese tech giant Huawei, which dates back to at least 2016, is also highlighted in the Fox News story – a story for which McCready declined comment.
Huawei has recently been under scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress over national security concerns, and it was placed on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List in May 2019.
According to the Department of Commerce, the sale or transfer of American technology to a company on this list requires a license issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security. The license can be denied if the sale or transfer would harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.
The relationship between Huawei and Strata revolves around the latter’s usage of Huawei string inverters. These inverters are crucial to Strata’s solar panel installations, as they convert the sun’s energy into usable electricity. Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar inverters.
It is this connection between Huawei and Strata Solar that has brought the candidate under more fire.
McCready’s statement addresses the apparent use of Huawei technology on solar farms in which Double Time has invested.
“There is no Huawei equipment in our solar farms,” McCready said in the statement.
Strata has used Huawei string inverters on several of its solar farms. While McCready has denied investing in Strata itself, his firm has invested in Strata-built solar farms.
A source close to McCready said that Double Time has reached out to projects the company has invested in and confirmed that no Huawei technology is on the farms. This source’s claims are yet to be independently verified.
With some notable exceptions, the Fox News story is generally accurate. Some dubious claims, however, have been made by people who cite the Fox News story as a source.
In his Facebook post, Bishop claimed that McCready’s company had “funded the outsourcing (sic) North Carolina jobs to China.”
The article said that McCready’s firm invested in a company that “outsourced production to China” – an issue that has not been completely settled. Sources familiar with McCready’s campaign say it’s not the case – that not a single job was outsourced, while many jobs were created in North Carolina for workers on the farms.
Still, Bishop has claimed that McCready was responsible for the outsourcing of “North Carolina jobs.” It’s a misleading assertion since the Fox story never explicitly mentioned anything about the outsourcing of jobs.
McCready said in his statement that “[Double Time] never outsourced a single job.”
Bishop is not the only one who has made a questionable claim related to McCready and China.
In a post on its website, the National Republican Congressional Committee also repeated the misleading claim about the outsourcing of jobs, and the organization cited the Fox News article as its source.
In that same post, the NRCC also said McCready is “threatening our national security” because a company he allegedly invested in did business with Huawei, which appears to be a reference to Strata.
In addition to being on the Entity List, Huawei has been called a potential threat to U.S. national security over concerns about the company’s links to Chinese intelligence services.
In February 2019, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and other senators wrote a letter to the Trump administration encouraging it to ban the usage of Huawei technologies to protect “U.S. electrical systems and infrastructure.”
Through a recent executive order enacted by President Donald Trump, companies dealing in “information and communications technology” deemed as “foreign adversaries” may be subjected to additional trade barriers with U.S. companies. Although Huawei was not officially named in the order, experts in the field suspect it was designed with the company in mind.
So, it is true to say that Huawei is seen by this administration as a potential threat to national security, especially based on actions by the federal government.
Still, it is likely a stretch to say McCready himself is threatening national security, as the NRCC claimed. McCready’s ties to Huawei are, at best, indirect.
Read McCready’s full statement to UNC here: “It is disappointing but not surprising that career politician Dan Bishop and his dark money special interest allies are so afraid of my experience as a businessman that they have resorted to spreading outright lies.
My company invests in solar farms, we do not build them. We play no role in engineering, design, or equipment selection. To be very clear, we never invested in Strata Solar, we never outsourced a single job, and there is no Huawei equipment in our solar farms.
On the contrary, we are proud to have helped create American jobs. For years, politicians from both parties have failed to stand up to China, allowing China to beat up American solar manufacturing. Everything now from your iPhone to solar farms has Chinese parts — that needs to change, and I’m proud to have been part of the solution by building up North Carolina’s solar industry, helping create 700 solar construction jobs right here in North Carolina and founding another company whose entire mission was to promote American-made products and jobs.”
According to the bankruptcy records of PG&E of California, that company was paying 700% more to solar firms for electricity
than the going rate for power.
Is Dan McCready charging North Carolinians more than the going rate for power?