The United States cannot count on keeping China’s automakers out of the American market forever and must instead learn to beat them head-on, Ford Motor executive chairman Bill Ford said Tuesday.
Speaking at an Axios event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 14, Ford said the domestic auto industry has to be ready for the day China’s carmakers break into the country. “We have to go toe-to-toe with China,” he said, adding that the U.S. “can’t expect to keep them out forever” and has to be able to “beat them at their own game.” The remarks are among the most candid yet from the great-grandson of Henry Ford, and they cut against the prevailing mood in Washington, where lawmakers are moving to wall off the market entirely.
The timing is pointed. Ford spoke as a bipartisan bill advances through Congress that would effectively ban Chinese cars from the U.S. The measure, the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026, was introduced by Senators Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and it would cut off Chinese vehicles, software and critical hardware at every stage — manufacturing, import and sale — phasing in software and vehicle restrictions in 2027 and hardware limits in 2030. The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to vote on the bill Wednesday, and a similar measure is pending in the House. Ford Motor has said it supports the legislation and its goal of protecting the U.S. industrial base.
Bill Ford’s message is that a ban buys time but not safety. Domestic automakers, he warned, still have to brace for the possibility that Chinese manufacturers find a way through — and prepare to compete rather than assume the door stays shut. His company is trying to do exactly that. Ford has been readying a new $30,000 all-electric pickup, built on a new low-cost platform in Louisville, aimed squarely at the affordable electric vehicles that Chinese brands have used to take market share around the world.
The scale of that challenge is growing fast. China’s carmakers — led by BYD and Geely — have ratcheted up exports over the past year and quickly gained share in major markets. Exports of electric vehicles and hybrids from Chinese automakers more than doubled in June from a year earlier, to roughly 877,000 vehicles, according to the China Passenger Car Association. Powered by heavy state subsidies and increasingly advanced technology, these companies have displaced established rivals across Europe, Latin America and Asia, and for now they are held out of the U.S. only by 100% tariffs and national-security restrictions.
Those restrictions have already claimed a casualty. Last month, the EV maker Polestar — controlled by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group — said it would stop selling cars in America because of a federal rule banning Chinese connected-vehicle software. Polestar had asked the Commerce Department for authorization to keep selling under a process laid out in the rule, the company said, but the government denied the request. Volvo, also majority-owned by Geely, fared better, winning Commerce Department clearance in May to continue operating in the U.S. The split outcome shows how the new rules are already reshaping which brands can survive in the American market — and which cannot.
For the U.S. auto industry, Bill Ford’s warning reframes the debate. The political consensus in Washington treats Chinese cars as a threat to be blocked; the chairman of America’s second-largest automaker is arguing that protection without preparation is a trap. Every year the tariffs and security rules hold the line is a year domestic manufacturers can use to close the cost and technology gap — or waste growing complacent behind the wall. Chinese firms have the manufacturing capacity, roughly 50 million vehicles a year against a home market of about 29 million, to flood export markets the moment barriers fall.
The stakes reach well beyond Detroit. The auto industry anchors millions of American manufacturing jobs and the tax base that funds schools and hospitals in communities across the Midwest. If Ford is right that the barriers eventually come down, the companies that used the reprieve to build genuinely competitive, affordable electric vehicles will endure — and those that relied on the ban alone may not. As Ford put it, the goal cannot simply be to keep China out. It has to be to win.
JBizNews Desk | Washington, D.C. © JBizNews.com All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution without written permission is prohibited.
