There’s a group of Democratic senators so scared of Chinese EVs reaching our shores in any meaningful way that they’re going to President Trump on their knees begging him to bar them from coming here and setting up shop. Senators Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer want Trump to prevent Chinese automakers from building vehicles in the U.S. and prevent Chinese cars assembled in Mexico or Canada from ending up here.
The trio of weenies cited Trump’s January comments where he said he was open to Chinese OEMs building U.S. factories. Of course, the bar is already incredibly high for Chinese automakers to actually exist in the U.S., including a pesky little 100% tariff. But, as American consumers are continually faced with U.S. automakers that are less and less interested in building EVs and shown Chinese EVs that are genuinely brilliant, its hard to stop people’s interest. From Reuters:
“We must be clear-eyed that inviting China’s automakers to set up shop in the United States would confer an insurmountable economic advantage impossible for American automakers to overcome, and it would trigger a national security crisis that could never be reversed,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Trump first reported by Reuters.
Asked for comment, the White House said “while the administration is always working to secure more investment into America’s industrial resurgence, any notion that we would ever compromise our national security to do so is baseless and false.”
In January, Trump said he was open to Chinese automakers building vehicles in the United States. “If they want to come in and build a plant and hire you and hire your friends and your neighbors, that’s great, I love that,” he told the Detroit Economic Club.
The Biden administration imposed sweeping regulations that effectively ban Chinese automakers from selling passenger vehicles in the United States in January 2025, citing national security concerns linked to the ability of vehicles to collect sensitive data on American owners.
The ban has the strong backing of U.S. carmakers and other auto groups. Last month, auto trade groups representing nearly all major car companies urged the U.S. government to keep Chinese carmakers out of the country ahead of Trump’s planned summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May.
Don’t worry, libs. It’s not just Democrats who are worried. Republicans in congress are just as against it, despite their free market ideals or whatever. Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno said he would propose legislation to seal off the U.S. so that there was never “a scenario where a Chinese automobile will enter our market, that’s hardware, that’s software, that’s partnerships.”
“While a new plant opened by a Chinese automaker in the United States may create some assembly and temporary construction jobs, that small number of jobs will not make up for the lasting job loss,” the letter from Slotkin, Baldwin and Schumer added.
[…]
The senators noted that in February automaker BYD was among a group of companies briefly added to a list of Chinese firms allegedly aiding Beijing’s military.
“The administration should move without hesitation to designate BYD and other Chinese automakers as military-connected entities,” they wrote.
Listen, I’m not nearly as much of a “Every Chinese EV is Better Than Every American EV” guy as some folks in this industry, but even I can admit that this is some really silly stuff. At the end of the day, it’s hurting the American consumer, and, if they want to build factories here, it’s hurting the American economy as well.
