UAW presses Congress to keep China committee and codify vehicle ban

Tariffs above 100% already keep Chinese EVs out of the US. Yet the UAW wants more, and it wants it before the year ends.

The union has written to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, urging them to keep the House Select Committee on China in place when Democrats take control of the chamber. "From global overcapacity in electric vehicles (EVs), Chinese ownership of Western automakers, and continued offshoring to China, we urgently need Congress's focused attention on these issues and their rapidly emerging downstream effects," the UAW wrote. It added: "Autoworkers cannot afford any lapse in Congress's attention on this issue."

The committee has done real work. Under Republican Representative John Moolenaar, it investigated Ford's battery partnership with CATL and the abandoned plan by a Gotion subsidiary to build a $2.4 billion battery materials plant in Michigan. What the union has not said is how a permanent committee would change outcomes those investigations failed to block.

What would the bill actually do?

The legislative vehicle is the Connected Vehicle Security Act, co-authored by Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin and Republican Senator Bernie Moreno. It has cleared the Senate Commerce Committee. Moreno said he was getting "really, really close" to a deal and hoped for a Senate vote as early as next week.

A lobbying group representing GM, Toyota, Volkswagen and other major automakers wants the work finished this year. That is a claim about timing, not substance. No floor vote is scheduled.

The current baseline is already strict. A rule introduced under former President Joe Biden in early 2025 effectively bars Chinese automakers from selling or building passenger vehicles in the US. Tariffs exceeding 100% on Chinese EVs reinforce the wall.

So why the urgency? Executive rules can be undone. The president most likely to undo them is the current one. Trump told Fox News in September: "If they want to come in and build a plant and hire American workers, I love that." Six industry groups representing virtually every automaker operating in the US responded with a joint letter urging him to keep "the door firmly shut" before his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. A statutory ban is as much a hedge against the current White House as against China.

Where does the coalition split?

On imports, labor and industry agree. On Chinese-built cars in the US, they fracture into at least three camps:

• Some proposals would restrict brands in which Chinese entities hold more than 15% equity.
• The UAW wants a blanket restriction with no equity carve-out.
• Ford has pitched a framework requiring Chinese entrants to form joint ventures with a US partner holding at least 51%, inverting the rules China long imposed on foreign carmakers.

GM lobbies against any joint-venture framework, seeing it as a route for low-cost rivals into the market.

Ford's position bears scrutiny. It dismissed reports of a specific Xiaomi joint venture as "false" earlier this year. Yet it has agreed to build vehicles for Geely at its idle Valencia plant in Spain from 2028. The company's public line and its European production schedule point in different directions.

Why the ownership test is hard to draft

The UAW's reference to "Chinese ownership of Western automakers" touches companies already making cars in America. Geely's majority-owned Volvo Cars assembles vehicles in South Carolina. Polestar, another Geely brand, will soon leave the US market entirely. More awkward: Chinese shareholders including Geely founder Li Shufu and BAIC together hold close to a fifth of Mercedes-Benz, which builds in Alabama. An equity threshold strict enough to satisfy the union risks catching established US employers. That is precisely where the drafting fight will concentrate.

The deeper motive is leverage. Codifying the ban would strip any president of the ability to trade US market access in negotiations with Xi. That concern, more than the data-security rationale behind the existing rule, is why GM, Toyota and the UAW want this settled before December 31.

Watch next: the Senate vote Moreno floated for next week, the committee's fate under Democratic control, and whether the 15% equity threshold survives contact with Mercedes-Benz's Alabama plant.