Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has put Ford Motor Company on notice over its business relationships with Chinese firms, and congressional Republicans are piling on with pointed questions the automaker has yet to fully answer.
Duffy sent a letter to Ford CEO Jim Farley expressing what he called "profound concern" about the company's manufacturing decisions, supply chain dependencies, and reliance on technology from China. The letter zeroed in on Ford's licensing deal with Chinese battery giant CATL at its Michigan factory, a planned joint venture with Chinese automaker Geely in Spain, reported talks with BYD over batteries for hybrid vehicles, and Ford's continued manufacturing of the Lincoln Nautilus in China.
The sharpest accusation: Duffy claimed Farley had pitched administration officials on a framework that could help Chinese automakers set up manufacturing operations inside the United States through American-controlled joint ventures. Ford flatly denied it, the New York Post reported.
At the center of the dispute sits Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan, a roughly $3 billion investment that employs approximately 1,700 workers to manufacture lithium-iron phosphate batteries. The White House itself highlighted the plant on August 31, 2026, touting it as part of a resurgence in Michigan manufacturing.
But the plant runs on technology licensed from CATL, formally known as Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd., a company the Pentagon has placed on its Section 1260H list of entities accused of ties to China's military. That distinction matters. Congressional investigators from the House Energy and Commerce Committee have previously sought Ford's complete CATL licensing agreement and raised a question Ford has never publicly settled: could the plant keep running if CATL's technical support were cut off?
The full licensing agreement has not been made public.
Ford pushed back hard. In a formal response, the company called the CATL arrangement "a limited technology-licensing and services agreement, not a joint venture or foreign-owned manufacturing operation."
"Ford owns the plant, controls the operation and employs the workforce."
Ford also called Duffy's letter a "wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines." On the allegation that Farley had proposed a joint-venture framework to bring Chinese automakers onto American soil, Ford was unequivocal:
"Ford has not proposed a joint-venture framework as described in the letter."
Duffy's letter did not stop at Michigan. He raised Ford's planned joint venture with Geely, the Chinese automaker, to build vehicles at a plant in Valencia, Spain. Under the announced terms, Ford would hold a 66% stake and Geely 34%. The venture would manufacture both Ford and Geely vehicles.
For the administration and its allies on Capitol Hill, the concern is straightforward: even a minority stake gives a Chinese competitor a manufacturing foothold in Western auto markets, with an American brand lending credibility and infrastructure.
Then there is the Lincoln Nautilus. Ford currently builds the SUV in China. Duffy criticized the company for waiting until 2030 to increase U.S. Lincoln production and phase out Chinese imports for the American market. Ford called that criticism "misguided," saying it has been working with administration officials on bringing production back to the United States. The company pointed to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who it said had praised Ford's reshoring decision, though the specific terms of Lutnick's praise were not detailed.
A four-year timeline to move a single vehicle line out of China is not the kind of urgency that satisfies critics who want American automakers to break from Beijing now, not on a schedule that stretches into the next presidential term.
Congressional Republicans wasted no time joining Duffy's offensive. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida praised the transportation secretary for what he described as "sounding the alarm about Ford's risky ties to [Chinese Communist Party] companies," as Reuters reported.
The House Select Committee on China went further, posting Ford's own company statements alongside reports about its Chinese business relationships under a pointed heading: "This is what Ford says vs. what it does." The juxtaposition was deliberate, framing Ford's public reassurances against the scope of its actual entanglements with Chinese firms.
And Reuters separately reported that Ford has been in talks with BYD, another major Chinese automaker, over a potential battery supply deal for Ford's hybrid vehicles. No completed agreement has been disclosed, but the mere existence of the discussions adds another thread to a pattern that Republican lawmakers are eager to pull.
Ford finds itself in an unusual position. The White House praised its Michigan battery plant investment just days before Duffy's letter landed. The same administration that celebrated the jobs now questions the technology powering them. That tension is not a contradiction so much as a signal: the administration wants American manufacturing, but not if it means permanent dependency on Chinese intellectual property and technical know-how.
Ford's response leans heavily on a single argument: it owns the plant, it employs the workers, and the CATL deal is a licensing arrangement, not a joint venture. On paper, the distinction matters. Licensing agreements are common across global manufacturing. Ford is not the only American company that uses foreign technology under contract.
But ownership and operational independence are not the same thing. Congressional investigators have already asked whether Ford could keep the Marshall plant running without CATL's ongoing technical support. Ford has not publicly answered that question. If the answer is no, if the plant's output depends on continued cooperation from a company the Pentagon has flagged for ties to China's military, then the "we own it" defense starts to look thin.
The CATL licensing agreement's specific terms, including termination rights, software dependencies, and technical support provisions, remain undisclosed. Until Ford opens those books, or is compelled to, the company is asking lawmakers and the public to take its word that the arrangement carries no strategic risk.
That is a harder sell when the same company is simultaneously planning a joint venture with a Chinese automaker in Europe, talking to another Chinese firm about battery supply, and building a luxury SUV in China with no plans to stop until the end of the decade.
Ford may well be telling the truth about every one of its Chinese partnerships. But when a company's answer to every question is "trust us" while keeping the contracts sealed, it should not be surprised when elected officials stop trusting.
