Mayor: Hit by tariffs, Finland defense manufacturers eye moves to Mooresville
Hit with tariffs, three high-paying defense industry manufacturers based in Finland “have shown interest” in opening plants in Mooresville, Mayor Chris Carney said Sept. 5.
Mooresville already is a defense industry hub in the state with such aerospace and defense companies as Corvid Technologies, MSI Defense Solutions and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Carney said.
The Finland companies’ interest in the Lake Norman town grew from two overseas trips Carney made at his own expense over the past eight months, he said in an exclusive interview with The Charlotte Observer.
Two U.S. defense contractors also are considering moves to Mooresville, he said.
Agreement reached with city in Finland
Carney said he and David Jerome, executive director of the Mooresville-based Institute of Digital Engineering USA, met with officials from Finland’s commerce and defense departments on the trips.
Last week, Carney signed a “memorandum of understanding” with officials in Finland’s “defense hub” city of Riihimäki. Mooresville and Riihimäki will share aerospace- and defense-related academic research, exchange skilled interns among companies, increase business-to-business trade and develop job training programs, including at Iredell County-based Mitchell Community College, he said.
Carney and Jerome were part of a North Carolina delegation to Finland last week that included about 15 N.C. legislators and commerce department and university system officials and 15 leaders of companies. Carney said he was the only elected official from a municipality on the trip.
“We met with the mayor of Riihimäki, Finland’s leading defense city,” Carney said, referring to himself and Jerome, former president and CEO of GM Korea who is married to Mooresville Town Manager Tracey Jerome.
“We met with him specifically to talk about U.S. companies that would have an interest in doing business in Finland, and Finnish companies that would have an interest in doing business in the United States,” Carney said. “More specifically, North Carolina, and most specifically, Mooresville.”
Riihimäki’s mayor, Jouni Eho, is a Davidson College graduate and retired pro basketball player. As a sophomore in 2001, he was on the Davidson College team that upset the UNC Tar Heels.
Attracting foreign manufacturers
The effort to lure more foreign manufacturers started “when the U.S. started talking about tariffs,“ said Carney, a Republican and former state senator.
“We decided there would be countries and companies around the world that would look to onshore in the United States to get around the tariffs, and we wanted to make sure the first name they thought of was Mooresville,” he said.
“Not only were the economics around tariffs strong, Finland had just joined NATO,” Jerome said during Friday’s interview at Corvid Technologies, where his nonprofit institute is based. “And they were motivated to see how they could intertwine the Finnish and American economies.”
Mooresville “was already looking at Germany and decided to add Finland to the list” of countries considering overseas operations due to the tariffs, Carney said. “And that’s how we started the relationship.”
Attracting manufacturers also “is a way for us to get back to where we make stuff, and we employ,” Carney said. “I love the Lowe’s and other corporate headquarters we’re fortunate to have. What we have to do is have the person currently making $15 an hour make $30 an hour.
“That’s how we really change the economy of North Carolina, back to where people have upward mobility because they have a high-skilled job,” Carney said. “And that’s really going to change the way this area grows economically – jobs through learning how to do high-skilled work.”
The Aug. 25-29 delegation also included Sen. Majority Leader Michael Lee, R-New Hanover; Sen. David Craven, R-Union; Rep. Kyle Hall, R-Forsyth; and Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, and officials from N.C. State, Duke and UNC Chapel Hill, Carney said.
The N.C. Department of Commerce organized the trip, “and we all had to pay for it ourselves,” Carney said. “Because that’s how much everybody believed in the cause, that North Carolina could be a top 10 defense state in the country.
“We’re 27th or something,” Carney said. “We’re pretty far down the list, and we have the largest bases in the country, Bragg, Lejeune.”
Carney said his and Jerome’s first trip to Finland interested two companies in Mooresville. The latest trip attracted a Finland-based company considering moving its U.S. operations from another state, Carney said.
Finland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on April 4, 2023, “marking a significant shift from its long-standing policy of military non-alignment,” according to the NATO website. Russia’s “full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022” spurred Finland to join the alliance, NATO said.
The border between Finland and Russia stretches 835 miles.
This story was originally published September 6, 2025 at 5:00 AM.