A Republican from Ohio and a Democrat from Michigan are pushing legislation that would ban Chinese-made vehicles and connected technology from American roads, adding congressional muscle to federal restrictions already set to reshape the U.S. auto market over the next several years.
Senators Bernie Moreno and Elissa Slotkin introduced the bill in spring 2026, framing it as both a national security measure and a defense of domestic manufacturing. In a statement, Moreno’s office warned that Chinese-built connected vehicles could enable espionage, mass data harvesting, and even remote interference with cars on American highways. Slotkin, who represents a state where the auto industry employs hundreds of thousands of workers, cast the proposal as a shield against what both senators describe as unfairly subsidized Chinese competition.
Federal rules are already on the books
The senators are not starting from scratch. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security published a final rule in the Federal Register in January 2025 that restricts connected-vehicle technology sourced from designated foreign adversaries, primarily China and Russia. Under 15 CFR Part 791, automakers selling in the United States must begin phasing out software from covered nations by model year 2027. Certain hardware restrictions kick in on January 1, 2029, and broader enforcement applies starting with model year 2030.
The rule targets any vehicle system that communicates with external networks: navigation, telematics, app-based services, over-the-air software updates, and automated driving features. The national security logic is straightforward. Modern cars generate enormous volumes of data about where people go, how they drive, and who is in the vehicle. If the chips, software, or cloud services handling that data are controlled by a foreign adversary, Washington argues, the risk of surveillance or sabotage is too high to tolerate.
That regulatory process began in February 2024, when the Biden-Harris Administration issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and opened a public comment period. The final rule that emerged carries the force of law, with specific compliance deadlines and penalties for violations. For automakers and their suppliers, those dates are not aspirational; they are already shaping procurement decisions and engineering roadmaps.
What the new bill would add
The Moreno-Slotkin legislation goes further than the existing regulation by seeking a statutory ban, not just an administrative restriction. According to the senators’ offices, the bill would prohibit Chinese vehicles and connected components from the U.S. market outright, a step that would be harder for a future administration to reverse than a rule issued through the Commerce Department.
A related measure, S.2040, the Connected Vehicle National Security Review Act, has also been introduced in the 119th Congress. That bill would establish a formal national security review process for connected vehicles and components, giving federal officials authority to evaluate specific technologies and transactions. It is not clear from available records whether S.2040 is a separate legislative vehicle from the Moreno-Slotkin proposal or an earlier version of the same effort introduced under a different framework. The two target overlapping vulnerabilities but take different structural approaches: one is described as a categorical prohibition, the other as a screening regime with case-by-case authority.
Whether the final legislation looks more like a flat ban or a review process will matter enormously. A blanket prohibition could affect not just finished Chinese vehicles but also subcomponents, software modules, and cloud services embedded deep in global supply chains. A review framework, by contrast, could allow some technologies that meet security benchmarks while blocking others.
The tariff wall already in place
The legislative push arrives on top of steep trade barriers. In 2024, the Biden administration raised tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100% under Section 301, effectively pricing most Chinese-built EVs out of the American market. Those tariffs remain in effect and have already discouraged Chinese automakers such as BYD and SAIC from pursuing direct U.S. sales strategies.
But tariffs alone do not address the supply chain concern at the heart of the Moreno-Slotkin bill. A car assembled in South Korea, Mexico, or even the United States can still contain Chinese-made connectivity hardware, Chinese-developed software, or data services routed through Chinese servers. The Commerce Department rule and the proposed legislation both aim at that deeper layer of the supply chain, where national origin is harder to trace and harder to regulate through border duties alone.
What is still unclear
Several important questions remain unanswered. No major automaker trade group, including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, has publicly endorsed or opposed the Moreno-Slotkin bill as of May 2026. The United Auto Workers union, which has a direct stake in both job protection and vehicle affordability, has not issued a formal position either. Without visible industry or labor support, the bill’s path through committee and onto the Senate floor is difficult to predict.
The economic impact on consumers is also unquantified. Stripping Chinese-origin components from connected vehicles could raise production costs, particularly for lower-priced electric vehicles that rely on batteries, sensors, and communications modules with existing ties to Chinese suppliers. No Congressional Budget Office score has been attached to either the Moreno-Slotkin proposal or S.2040, leaving the scale of potential price increases largely a matter of speculation.
It is also unclear how the bill would interact with the Commerce Department’s existing rule. If both a statutory ban and an administrative restriction apply simultaneously, automakers could face overlapping compliance obligations with different definitions, timelines, and enforcement mechanisms. Harmonizing those frameworks would likely require coordination between Congress and the executive branch that has not yet been publicly outlined.
Why Ohio and Michigan are leading
The bipartisan pairing is not accidental. Ohio and Michigan are home to some of the largest vehicle assembly plants and parts suppliers in the country. General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis all operate major facilities in both states, and their workforces are acutely sensitive to competition from imported vehicles and components. For Moreno, the bill aligns with Republican priorities on China hawkishness and manufacturing protectionism. For Slotkin, it reinforces a Democratic message about defending middle-class industrial jobs while addressing legitimate security concerns.
That cross-party alignment gives the effort a better chance of sustained attention than a proposal backed by only one side of the aisle. Connected-vehicle security has drawn interest from lawmakers across the political spectrum, and the combination of national security framing with domestic jobs messaging is designed to appeal to a broad coalition.
What drivers and the industry should watch
For automakers, parts suppliers, and fleet operators, the regulatory clock is already running. The Commerce Department’s final rule requires action well before any new legislation could be signed into law. Companies that delay adjustments to sourcing strategies or electronic architectures risk missing fixed compliance deadlines that carry real penalties.
For consumers, the practical effects will show up gradually. Features that depend on overseas data services or foreign-sourced connectivity hardware may be redesigned, replaced with domestic or allied-nation alternatives, or dropped from certain models. Vehicle prices, particularly for EVs, could rise if replacement components cost more than the Chinese-origin parts they replace.
The direction from Washington is unmistakable: connected vehicles are being treated less like consumer electronics and more like critical infrastructure, subject to the same national security scrutiny applied to telecommunications networks and power grids. Whether the final policy framework comes from the Commerce Department’s existing rule, from the Moreno-Slotkin bill, from S.2040, or from some combination of all three, the era of unexamined reliance on foreign-adversary technology in American cars is closing.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
