The Biden Administration announced Thursday that Chinese cars – which currently are very rarely seen on American roads due to high tariffs – could eventually pose a significant risk to the nation by potentially collecting sensitive data about Americans and sending it back to Beijing.
“I am announcing unprecedented actions to ensure that cars on U.S. roads from countries of concern like China do not undermine our national security,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
“I have directed my Secretary of Commerce to conduct an investigation into connected vehicles with technology from countries of concern and to take action to respond to the risks.”
The Biden Administration will now begin the formal process of seeking public comment as to how to best regulate these vehicles. These rules could also potentially apply to autos from countries like Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. However, none of these countries currently manufacture cars anywhere on the scale of China.
Last year, China became the world’s largest car manufacturer, surpassing Japan. BYD, one of the major Chinese automakers, recently overtook Tesla as the planet’s biggest EV manufacturer. BYD sold 530,000 cars in the fourth quarter of 2023, topping Tesla’s 485,000.
In a call with reporters on Wednesday evening, Biden Administration officials, including Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said that federal authorities were not responding to any specific new threat, but that there was a “high-level concern” that foreign adversaries might be able to collect intimate information about Americans.
“The more work we’ve done on these national security risks associated with [electric vehicles] and [autonomous vehicles], the more concerned we get,” she said.
Officials declined to provide further detailed information. However, a senior administration official said that while there was no imminent threat, the looming concern of Chinese cars is a “next few years’ problem.”
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