WASHINGTON, D.C. – Detroit’s Road & Track Magazine recently highlighted U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) concerns about Chinese vehicles coming into the United States and her history of legislation to counter their manufacture and sale domestically.
Ahead of President Trump’s scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 14, and after his remarks at the Detroit Economic Club when he suggested that he’d “love” to see Chinese car companies come into the United States, Slotkin is pushing back against any potential agreement that would open U.S. roads and markets to Chinese-made vehicles.
Slotkin’s first bill in the Senate was to ban Chinese-connected vehicles from entering the United States citing national security and economic concerns.
Key Excerpts
- Slotkin is no stranger to the questions surrounding Chinese automakers in America; her first piece of legislation as a new senator, The Connected Vehicle National Security Review Act, specifically outlined the potential national security risks associated with Chinese automakers, as well as economic risks to our own automotive industry.
- “I think it’s an issue of economic security and national security,” Slotkin told Road & Track. “You don’t have to be a deep expert to understand that the Chinese Communist Party heavily subsidizes their industry, so they have a whole strategy of basically stealing our intellectual property—making stuff like cars and drones off of stuff that we’ve invented, and then heavily subsidizing them so that they undercut and kill the industry that they enter.”
- Slotkin’s background as a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency is paramount to her stance on the risks involved here. Data collection in particular is top of mind for the senator, especially since modern vehicles employ complex camera suites, lidar systems, and geolocation services.
- And while Chinese automakers already operate research and development facilities in the States that could provide them some ability to capture data, Slotkin believes a fleet of cars in citizens’ driveways is a whole other ballgame.
- “I have concerns, also, about the theft of intellectual property going on across our universities, our institutions. Obviously, [Chinese automakers] are here in the United States because they’re interested in being in the middle of our cutting edge: Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. But that’s very different than bringing in a fleet of vehicles that is going to start hoovering up Americans’ data and information and underselling every auto we have.”