Washington — The United States should quit trying to compete with China on electric vehicles, U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno said Tuesday, sparking renewed debate over what direction the nation’s auto industry should take amid shifting federal policies on trade, tailpipe emissions and fuel efficiency standards.
“We were ahead of them by a mile, by 10 miles, on the internal combustion engine. They went into EVs, and then they convinced the Western world to go into EVs and play their game,” the freshman Republican lawmaker from Ohio said during an auto industry conference. “That was just irrational, dumb policy.”
Moreno, an auto dealer turned influential D.C. lawmaker, made his comments at an industry conference a day before President Donald Trump is expected to unveil new, more lenient fuel economy standards, his administration’s latest move to roll back federal policies pushing producers and consumers toward EVs.
Some of the panelists at the conference, including policymakers, analysts and industry leaders, pushed back at Moreno’s call to leave EV development and consumer markets to the United States’ chief economic rival.
“They’re taking the countryside and surrounding the cities, and we’re here in blissful ignorance thinking, ‘Wow, I love my big trucks,'” said Michael Dunne, a former General Motors Co. executive and CEO of advisory firm Dunne Insights LLC.
Moreno has frequently railed against Biden-era moves to set aggressive emissions targets and boost federal support for EVs. He again condemned those policies and criticized American allies for allowing Chinese autos inside their borders, even as many in the industry stress that U.S. manufacturers need to find their own success with electric powertrains or risk ceding the future to China.
The senator called out Europe as a warning sign for the United States. Chinese automakers nearly doubled their market share in the European market during the first half of 2025, now exceeding 5% of new vehicle sales per data from JATO Dynamics Ltd.
“You have to be insane to allow the Chinese to take over the auto industry all over the world in a predatory way like that,” Moreno said, responding to a question about China’s excess automotive manufacturing capacity.
“You guys have Chinese infrastructure. You have Chinese automobiles,” he continued.
“Why would you allow a country to bring in automobiles that would destroy your own industrial sector? That is, they’re not here to compete. They’re here to destroy. And you have, what, 90 car companies in China, all subsidized by the government, trying to kill each other.
“That’s not about healthy competition. It’s about taking over the auto industry and making the world dependent on their technology.”
Moreno also celebrated major policy changes during the first year of the Trump administration that cut back on the Biden-era federal push toward EVs. He highlighted congressional action to cancel stringent state-level EV regulations, the zeroing out of fuel economy fines and an end to federal EV subsidies.
“We’re not going to play (China’s) game. We’re playing our game, and we’re not going to allow these cars to come into the U.S. market,” Moreno said. He also said consumer preferences should guide automakers in the adoption of EVs and other new technologies.
The lawmaker’s remarks came during an on-stage conversation with John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the top automotive lobbying group in Washington and organizer of Tuesday’s conference.
Bozzella probed at Moreno’s EV stance: “Do we need to have a balance, though, between supporting our current leadership on internal combustion engines and remaining a cutting-edge technology developer for automotive technologies of the future? Do you worry that we risk becoming sort of an island market if we aren’t keeping up with technology investments?”
The senator was unmoved. “I pushed back on the premise that EV somehow is about innovation,” he said. “Electric vehicles were around in 1910. It’s not like this is new technology.”
“I’m all for innovation, but having a car driven by a 2,000-pound battery is not innovation in my mind. Now, maybe at some point in the future, there’s somebody out there that invents something new. Who knows what comes up? But government shouldn’t play the role of putting their hands on the scale.”
Speakers during the event seemed to allude to the new corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, regulations coming soon but did not publicly preempt the likely Wednesday announcement from Trump. The standards are expected to be lenient on automakers, representing a continued shift away from Biden-era policies.
Jonathan Morrison, head of Trump’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said during a keynote address that he looked forward to discussing CAFE rulemaking in the future, “but not today.” The comment drew several laughs from the audience.
Other speakers at the event included NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser, General Motors Co. North America President Duncan Aldred and Mercedes-Benz North America CEO Jason Hoff.
The pushback
Industry experts who spoke after Moreno agreed that China has become a formidable rival to the United States in the global auto industry but challenged his suggestion that U.S. manufacturers and policymakers should quit trying to compete on EVs.
“I agree with most of what Sen. Moreno said, but I tend to think, you know, EVs are a bit innovative,” Wells Fargo automotive analyst Colin Langan said. “I do think U.S. companies need to make sure they have leadership there. I do think ultimately we’re going that direction, and to not have that technology and capability is a problem.”
He underscored China’s advantage in the EV sector and how much more quickly businesses like BYD Co. and SAIC Motor Corp. are moving compared to Detroit brands.
“The Chinese are much more efficient. They’re more lean in organizational structures. They don’t advertise as much, which might actually be wasteful, and they actually are much faster at moving, right?” he said. “(Research and development) as a percent of sales is half in China of what it is in legacy companies. And yet, the products come out every two to three years, as opposed to five years.”
Dunne was more dramatic in his description of China’s growing automotive and EV empire around the world.
He described Mao Zedong’s rise to becoming chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and formally establishing the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Mao and the party, Dunne said, sewed influence and gathered support all over rural areas before eventually taking China’s coastal cities.
Dunne described the current moment for global autos in similar terms: “They’re flooding into the UK, Australia — you name it — Middle East, South Africa. They’re going everywhere in the world, except for two countries: the United States and Canada.”
The analyst has long said the United States needs to step up its auto manufacturing efforts for EVs and critical areas of the supply chain or risk losing out to China. He agreed — at least in spirit — with pushes from Trump and Moreno to bring more auto production back stateside.
He pointed out that “95% of cars that will be sold in China this year will be built in China,” versus a roughly 50-50 U.S. split on imports and domestic products. “A little bit counterintuitively, in order to compete with China, we have to say, ‘You want access to this market, you must manufacture here,’ just as China did,” Dunne said.
Bob Lee, president of battery giant LG Energy Solution, more directly pushed back on Moreno’s assertion that U.S. consumers — who have not widely embraced EVs — need to drive a transition to the new powertrain.
“I know what Sen. Moreno said earlier about just letting the consumers choose, and I think there’s some validity to that when it comes to incremental innovations. Not when it comes to large-scale, highly capital-intensive, multi-decade innovations, I don’t think it happens that way,” Lee said.
“I don’t think it is a mystery. Why do (the) Chinese dominate the flat panel space, solar cells, batteries? These are long-term processes, capital-intensive industries that they decided decades ago that they’re going to focus on. All the policies and investment program energy is going to be going into this.”
“So to just simply sit back and think, ‘OK, right? We’re just going to sit back and let things play out?’ Are we going to win these major spaces? I think that’s a risk that we cannot take as a country anymore. We need industrial policy to work together in order to win in these critical spaces going forward.”
Slotkin’s take
Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotin, D-Holly, was one of the day’s final speakers. She joined Bozzella on stage for a conversation similar to the one with her Republican counterpart earlier in the day.
Bozzella mentioned a 2024 campaign ad Slotkin released, commending her for “putting her finger on” voter and industry sentiment related to electric vehicles. The ad featured Slotkin speaking directly to a camera, saying she opposed so-called electric vehicle mandates but wanted Michigan and Detroit to continue leading the auto industry into the future
“No one should tell us what to buy, and no one is going to mandate anything. But here’s the thing, if there’s going to be a new generation of vehicles, I want that new generation built right here in Michigan, not China.”
Slotkin affirmed that point Tuesday and said she stood by her vote earlier this year as the lone Senate Democrat in support of repealing stringent state-level EV regulations.
“I really do believe that Michigan, preferably, should be making the next generation of vehicles, no matter what kind of vehicle they are. I also understand choice, and in capitalism, choice is the ultimate decider,” the senator said.
She added: “It wasn’t actually a hard vote. And if you know your state … it’s just not hard to understand this issue from a Michigan perspective.”
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
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