When two South Korean companies announced a multibillion-dollar investment to build solar panel and electric battery factories in northwest Georgia, federal subsidies helped close a deal to diversify the local economy.
The factories promised thousands of new jobs, transforming the manufacturing base in Cartersville, once a cotton mill town before an Anheuser-Busch brewery arrived in the 1990s and a tire plant in 2006.
But now Republicans in Congress want to gut the subsidies for projects across the country in a tax cut bill likely days from final passage. President Donald Trump's signature legislation could harm Cartersville despite it being in overwhelmingly Republican Bartow County, which backed Trump with 75 of the vote all three times he appeared on the ballot.
Both companies say they're continuing their buildout plans. But Steve Taylor, a Republican who is Bartow County's lone elected commissioner, says ending the tax credits would be "a little concerning."
"Those companies came and it gave us a completely different type of industry and manufacturing for our community," Taylor said.