“These cars could be used as literal weapons on American roads.”

WASHINGTON, DC – With Chinese automakers flooding markets around the world, The Ripon Society held a breakfast discussion yesterday morning with U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who discussed his legislation to keep Chinese-made vehicles out of the U.S. market and laid out why he believes the threat they pose is too significant to ignore.

Moreno began by explaining the framework he has used to guide his work in the Senate.

“Everything I do is on the three Cs—which is cars, meaning the auto industry; crypto, meaning digital asset policies, that’s a space that I came from; and Colombia, meaning Latin American policy.”

The Ohio Senator then turned to the first of those three Cs — cars — and the origins of his push to keep Chinese vehicles out of American driveways.

“We have in place something called the Connected Vehicle Rule, which I think was a great start,” Moreno said. “What it basically said was, ‘Hey, these cars are different than cars in the past. They’re connected to our critical infrastructure, so we’re going to make sure that the software and hardware is free of any malware, any China-type of problems there.’”

Moreno explained that his goal is to build on that rule with permanent legislation.

“What I wanted to do is, why don’t we put this in a permanent legislation so that we can hermetically seal the U.S. market from any threat from countries that are on the Foreign Entity of Concern list,” the Buckeye lawmaker explained.

“We’re saying the U.S. government has designated four countries as Foreign Entities of Concern. Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia. So any car company that’s domiciled or controlled by one of those countries, we’re going to make certain that we don’t allow them into the U.S. market.”

From there, Moreno laid out three reasons lawmakers and consumers alike should be concerned about Chinese vehicles entering the U.S. market, starting with consumer protection.

“There are 92 Chinese brands. Ninety-two just in China, companies you’ve never heard of in your life. A lot of those, if we open our market, would come here. So, imagine a scenario where you bought one of those cars because they came with a 10-year warranty, free oil changes, free tires, free car washes. You buy that car and a year later, the company is no longer doing business in the U.S. You have no warranty, no spare parts – you have a car that’s basically useless.”

If consumer protection wasn’t reason enough, Moreno said, the second concern is national security.

“These cars all have lots and lots of cameras. They’re connected to the manufacturers… imagine with a Chinese vehicle, by Chinese law, they’re required to send that information back to the CCP.

“You can imagine this area where there’s millions of Chinese vehicles that could be remote accessed from Beijing and all of a sudden, you’re driving and you don’t control your steering, you don’t control your braking, you don’t control your acceleration, and these cars could be used as literal weapons on American roads.”

The third and final reason, Moreno said, is economic.

“I call it industrial suicide. If you bring in what I call automotive fentanyl to the United States, it will wipe out the auto industry, which is about 10% of our GDP,” he said. “Last month, 34% of all hybrids sold in Europe were Chinese. A year ago, that number would’ve been negligible… I was in Ecuador about a month ago. Zero Chinese cars a year ago. 56% right now, which is wild.”

Moreno said his bill, the Connected Vehicle Security Act, is designed to keep the U.S. market exactly where it stands today.

“In the U.S., probably say it’s zero. And so, what my legislation does, the Connected Vehicle Security Act, is it’s going to keep it at exactly zero,” he said. “We got it out of committee 28 to zero. We’re up to about 50 co-sponsors in the Senate. We have a companion bill in the House. I’m extraordinarily confident that we’re going to get this bill across the finish line by the end of September.”

Moreno closed by putting the scale of the challenge in perspective.

“China is exporting more cars per month than we make here in the United States of America,” he said. “The excess capacity is absolutely overwhelming.”

To watch Senator Moreno’s remarks before The Ripon Society yesterday morning, please click the link below:

The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.