U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) has introduced a bill that aims to keep Chinese-made vehicles out of the country by empowering the Commerce Secretary to ban imports.

The bill, referred to as the Connected Vehicle National Security Review Act, would establish a national security review process for connected vehicles and connected vehicle components manufactured by companies from China or other countries of concern. 

Aside from worries over cheap vehicles flooding the market, Slotkin says there are concerns over data collection and them posing a threat to national security.

“So a Chinese vehicle made by a Chinese automaker, or the key connected parts that could go in a car that could send that important data back to Beijing,” Slotkin said.

It’s the first piece of legislation for the Holly Democrat since entering the Senate in January.

American-made cars also collect a lot of data by pairing with our smart phones. The same is true for other tech giants like Facebook and Google. Slotkin says that’s different because those companies are subject to laws here in the U.S.

“If some character in the company uses that [information] for nefarious purposes, they could be prosecuted. They could be gone after here in the United States, by American courts,” She said. “That is not the case if a Chinese company was collecting all kinds of data on you and sending it back to Beijing.”

The bill has already found bipartisan support in the Senate and Slotkin is optimistic it will pass.

Hoekstra confirmed as US ambassador to Canada

There’s been a call for Democrats to push back harder against the plans of the Trump administration.

However, that did not extend to the confirmation of Pete Hoekstra to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada. The former Congressman and chair of the Michigan Republican Party received the backing of both of Michigan’s Democratic Senators — Slotkin and Gary Peters.

Slotkin felt it was an easy choice, even though Hoekstra had been working to elect her opponent.

“Our relationship with Canada right now is as fraught and messy and upsetting as I’ve ever seen it in my entire lifetime,” Slotkin said. “So who do I want in Ottawa pushing back on President Trump’s kind of blanket approach to Canada? I want a Michigander who understands Michigan’s economy, Michigan’s agriculture, Michigan’s manufacturing.”

Slotkin has voted to confirm members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, including Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. She was hardly alone. Rubio was confirmed unanimously. However, since taking the job, Rubio has led the charge to remove people from this country whose views do not align with the Trump administration.

Rubio also oversaw the extraordinary rendition of men sent to an El Salvador prison without due process.

“Marco Rubio was someone who was a senator and served on these national security committees for a long time, and I think what you’re seeing is just the pure dominance of the Trump White House and making policy over the heads of these cabinet level officials,” Slotkin said.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration should “facilitate” the return of one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Slotkin says this sets up a Constitutional crisis.

“The president has not been obeying a number of court orders, right, not just on this, on a bunch of other things,” she said. “The constitution has three co-equal branches of government. It means that we’re going to have to have a showdown about whether he obeys this court order, and a few others.”

How far will that showdown go?

“Obviously, we never want to get to the point of conflict and violence,” Slotkin said. “But the average citizen can’t ignore a court order. The average business can’t do it. So this administration is going to have their moment here, and the courts are going to have their moment as well.”

The heads of the Detroit Regional Chamber and the trade association MichAuto are just two of the many business leaders requesting a pause to tariffs.

They sent a letter last week asking the White House to avoid tariffs on auto parts and vehicles and instead renegotiate the free trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada (USMCA.)

The administration enacted the auto tariffs anyway.

Now MichAuto Executive Director Glenn Stevens Jr. says price hikes are both inevitable and potentially damaging to Michigan’s economy.

Listen: Auto advocates want Trump to hit the brakes on tariffs

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full conversation above.

Glenn Stevens, Jr., MichAuto: (Interview edited for clarity.) When we look at the impact of the tariff stack that’s going on, and there are multiple tariffs that have been applied so far, we’re concerned about the rise in the input costs to the suppliers of all sizes, the vehicle manufacturers across Detroit and all of Michigan. The second thing we’re concerned about is how these costs stack up. The overall selling price of a new vehicle, which is already at a near record, is $49,000 a year. So any impact on that selling price, we’re concerned about what that does to market demand. It has a negative impact if that demand is not strong. And we really would like to see the USMCA trade agreement reopened, as is called for in 2026. But we hope that the president will continue to evaluate goods going between our three countries.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: The president has argued that these tariffs are a way to try to force, in effect, manufacturing back to the U.S. Do you see that as a possibility if these tariffs continue forward, or do you think they’re going to have some counterproductive effect?

GS: No one would argue, and we certainly wouldn’t, that increasing manufacturing in Detroit and Michigan in the United States is a bad thing. No one would argue that improving our border security against illegal drugs and illegal immigration is a bad thing. However, it takes significant time to make these changes, years, not months, in the case of moving assembly plants. So that’s one thing. The second thing is we have to remain globally competitive and we have a supply chain that already works between our three countries. Does it need to be improved? Yes, that’s why reopening and renegotiating the USMCA would be a good way to go. So there are some concerns, but there are opportunities. And yes, eventually over time, if those decisions are made, we could see increased production in the United States, which would not be a bad thing at all.

QK: Mexico and Canada and the U.S. have operated essentially like one big country for the auto industry. They regularly have parts going back and forth over the border. Now the president may not only be trying to force more manufacturing to the U.S., but he’s also causing some countries to levy reciprocal tariffs.

GS: In the case of Michigan and Ontario, we operate seamlessly. This is a 120-year-old industry between our two regions, Ontario and Michigan, let alone the whole Great Lakes region and really North America. Unraveling that supply chain is costly, disruptive and will cost jobs on both sides of the border. Again I stress that we would like to see the tool that we have at hand, the USMCA, to be reopened and renegotiated. And out of that can come more manufacturing, but it also can keep a trade block that works intact for the U.S. auto industry to be globally competitive.

QK: Do you see any upside in the near future in regards to these tariffs, whatever happens in the long run?

GS: I’m a pretty positive, upbeat, glass-half-full person. But there’s not a lot of positives and goods we’re seeing today. If I look at the stock market, at companies which are paralyzed and I look at us, really, in a trade war with our friends and neighbors literally across the Detroit River, I’m not seeing a lot positive in the short term. That’s pretty clear today.

QK: You and the president of the Detroit Regional Chamber recently sent a letter to the White House and other lawmakers arguing your point. If it falls on deaf ears, so to speak, what other recourse do you see that the auto industry might have to try to enact some changes to what’s currently in place?

GS: We’re going to keep communicating with the White House, with our congressional delegation. That letter was also sent to all the members, Republican and Democrat, in the Michigan federal delegation to Washington. We work closely with other companies, other organizations, other trade associations, and we’re all in this together to communicate the importance of the industry and its complexity. But if these tariffs continue, the industry is going to have to make some tough, long-term decisions. We’re going to have to help mitigate that and hopefully we don’t see employment loss, we don’t see companies leave, we don’t see companies financially under duress. I stressed before how important it is for Michigan and the entire region, which includes Ontario and our Great Lakes states and North America as a whole, to be globally competitive. We have a Chinese auto industry that did not exist just a few short years ago that is really expanding globally and is really competitive from a cost, quality and design and engineering standpoint. We can’t isolate ourselves from the world and ignore the fact that Chinese industry is growing. We have to be able to compete with it. And unraveling a trade block and supply chain that works very efficiently is not the direction we should be going in. We should be looking at how we can be more competitive?

QK: In your view, what would make it more competitive?

GS: We talk about this every day. Unfortunately, we had to take our eye off the ball a little bit the last couple months. But the industry is looking at how do we make our plants more efficient? How do we make our people more prepared for the digital skills needed? There will be more automation, but that’s not eliminating jobs as much as it is providing new opportunities for good jobs to interact and program and repair and maintain that automation. We have to look at how do we be more competitive with the technologies at hand, including things like AI? That’s what we want to focus on, that’s what we’re going to have to do together as a partnership between government, labor and industry. That’s really what we want to get back to.

Stock markets worldwide are careening even lower Friday after China matched President Donald Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war.

Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

Trump’s 25% tariff on imported vehicles — which the administration says will help foster domestic manufacturing — is likely to both drive up auto prices and force automakers that rely on global supply chains to rethink what and where vehicles are being made.

Stellantis has already laid off 900 workers at plants in Michigan and Indiana after pausing production at some of its assembly plants in Mexico and Canada.

Patrick Anderson, CEO of East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group, told WDET that he thinks Trump’s tariffs will cause Michigan’s economy to tank. 

“For the lowest tariff cost vehicles we expect prices to go up somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000 per car,” Anderson said. “For a lot of mid-priced cars (it will go up) $5,000, $8,000, $10,000.”

Anderson said Michigan’s close ties to the auto industry are a good thing. However, it also makes us more vulnerable to recessions.

“Also, in this case, (more vulnerable to) a huge U-turn in terms of trade policy,” he added. “(Now) that’s being undertaken by the Trump administration, which has very negative effects on our ability to build cars and sell cars here in Michigan and in other states.”

As long as the tariffs are in place, he says it’s not likely to get better.

“I don’t see any upside to higher tariffs for states like Michigan any time in the next…year,” Anderson said. “You might get some production to move to some plants, but you’re already seeing — and this is just in days — reductions in employment.”

The cratering stock market — in addition to the tariffs — feeds into itself and makes things even worse.

“You’re seeing a huge toll on people’s retirement savings that affects whether or not they’re going to buy cars,” Anderson said.

And if higher prices lead to a drop in sales and manufacturing, the state and region will drop into an avoidable collapse, he said.

“Because you can’t take this much of a, really a baseball bat to auto sales, if that’s your leading industry, and not expect there to be employment losses.”

Auto companies are also navigating the reversal of fuel economy standards, dialed down greenhouse gas emission standards and a host of electric vehicle policy rollbacks.

Associated Press writers Stan Choe, Alexa St. John and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.