OPINION:
The enactment of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a major win for President Trump. It delivers middle-class tax relief, boosts border security, funds military modernization and propels the “America First” agenda.
However, because of a last-minute lobbying effort, the legislation includes a loophole allowing U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit Beijing via tax credits enriching Ford Motor Co., which would in turn pay royalties and licensing fees to Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd.
CATL is an electric vehicle battery manufacturer deeply tied to the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. The Pentagon designates it as a Chinese military company. The Defense and Homeland Security departments have prohibited the procurement of CATL batteries because of the national security threat they pose.
Unless the president or the Treasury Department intervenes, CATL could profit through U.S. taxpayer-backed credits and gain deeper access to America’s technology supply chain, jeopardizing national security.
This is a tale of lobbyists doing their client’s bidding in Washington and securing a favorable outcome. It has all the telltale signs of a successful influence operation by the People’s Republic of China.
A 2022 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that the CCP is targeting private U.S. companies to advance its geopolitical priorities. It stated: “The PRC may use market access, investments, or economic dependency as leverage and overtly press U.S. business leaders … to lobby Washington for policies Beijing favors.”
That was exactly what happened in Marshall, Michigan.
In 2023, with the strong backing of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ford announced a $3 billion EV battery plant in Marshall, partnering with CATL. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin had blocked the “deal,” rightly calling it a “Trojan horse” for the CCP that would undermine national and economic security.
Under the terms of the agreement, Ford would license CATL’s technology and use unvetted CATL employees — Chinese nationals — for the plant’s operation.
Disturbingly, this facility would sit just miles from two sensitive U.S. military installations. Given recent patterns of espionage and other nefarious CCP-linked academic and business activity in Michigan, the CATL deal is a glaring threat.
Under the deal, Ford gets access to low-cost Chinese know-how and China gains financially and strategically. Ford engineered the agreement, which skirted national security safeguards and made the project’s viability contingent on cashing in on the advanced manufacturing investment tax credits from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The evasion of these “safeguards” results from deficiencies and blind spots within the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a Treasury-led panel tasked with reviewing foreign investments for national security risks. The Ford-CATL “deal” avoided scrutiny by structuring it as a licensing arrangement, not a direct investment.
The announcement of this partnership drew swift backlash from lawmakers and national security experts.
As a U.S. senator, Marco Rubio demanded a CFIUS review and introduced legislation to block the tax credits. He warned that the move would “deepen U.S. reliance on the CCP for battery tech.” Former CIA Director Leon E. Panetta warned that Chinese nationals often exploit their presence in the U.S. for “their own intelligence purposes” and “for their own economic purposes.” William Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, argued that the partnership would increase U.S. supply chain dependency on China. He said, “This partnership is not only selfish and misguided but also naive to the national security and national interests of the U.S.”
Lawmakers took these concerns seriously, and the House passed a version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that included restrictions blocking tax credits from reaching the Ford-CATL plant.
Then the lobbying started.
Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford decried the legislation ahead of the Senate vote. He warned that restrictions would threaten the $3 billion investment and 1,700 jobs in Michigan. Ford launched a full-court media press, hosting journalists at the Marshall site to “show off its $3 billion commitment to the facility,” doing rounds of interviews to amplify the narrative that the House’s efforts to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing to Beijing would hurt Michigan.
This pressure campaign worked. The final Senate version, signed into law by President Trump, quietly included language making the Ford-CATL “deal” eligible for billions of dollars in federal tax credits.
Ford and the CCP may have won in the short term, but the result harms American taxpayers and our national and economic security. The Ford-CATL agreement is a textbook case of CCP influence as articulated by the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center: a Chinese military-linked firm embedded in U.S. infrastructure, financially propped up by U.S. policy shaped through corporate lobbying that serves Beijing’s interests.
China could now be further entrenched in a critical American industry, and U.S. taxpayers, all the weaker for it, are footing the bill.
Congress caved to Ford’s lobbying, but the Trump administration can still act.
With the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s enactment on July 4, a 45-day countdown began for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to issue guidelines implementing enhanced foreign entity of concern restrictions in the bill. These guidelines offer an opportunity to shut the door on market-distorting subsidies for foreign-controlled energy sources.
A sharper look is further necessitated, as Ford has now announced it has taken out a $3 billion line of credit because of “economic uncertainty” and mounting costs, losses on EVs and recalls.
Mr. Trump has long recognized the threat posed by China and opposes sending taxpayer dollars abroad to enrich hostile regimes. Through Mr. Bessent, the administration can now prevent a CCP-tied company from profiting from U.S. subsidies and, while at it, beef up CFIUS so that America is better prepared to defend against the growing threat from China through such “deals.”
• Joseph Cella served concurrently as U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu from 2019 to 2021. A co-founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast and Catholic Vote, he is director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group.
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