Dec. 2, 2025, 1:58 p.m. ET
Washington — The United States should quit trying to compete with China on electric vehicles, Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno said Tuesday.
“We were ahead of them by a mile, by 10 miles, on the internal combustion engine. They went into EVs, and then they convinced the Western world to go into EVs and play their game,” the freshman lawmaker from Ohio said during an auto industry conference.
“That was just irrational, dumb policy.”
Moreno, an auto dealer turned influential policymaker in Washington, has frequently railed against Biden-era moves to set aggressive emissions targets and boost federal support for EVs. He again condemned those policies and criticized American allies for allowing Chinese autos inside their borders, even as many in the industry stress that U.S. manufacturers need to find their own success with electric powertrains or risk ceding the future to China.
The senator called out Europe as a warning sign for the United States. Chinese automakers nearly doubled their market share in the European market during the first half of 2025, now exceeding 5% of new vehicle sales per data from JATO Dynamics Ltd.
“You have to be insane to allow the Chinese to take over the auto industry all over the world in a predatory way like that,” Moreno said, responding to a question about China’s excess automotive manufacturing capacity.
“You guys have Chinese infrastructure. You have Chinese automobiles,” he continued.
“Why would you allow a country to bring in automobiles that would destroy your own industrial sector? That is, they’re not here to compete. They’re here to destroy. And you have, what, 90 car companies in China, all subsidized by the government, trying to kill each other.
“That’s not about healthy competition. It’s about taking over the auto industry and making the world dependent on their technology.”
Moreno also celebrated major policy changes during the first year of the Trump administration that cut back on the Biden-era federal push toward EVs. He highlighted congressional action to cancel stringent state-level EV regulations, the zeroing out of fuel economy fines and an end to federal EV subsidies.
Yet more changes are coming, as the Trump administration completed a review last month of key fuel economy standards. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the White House is expected to announce the new regulations Wednesday.
“We’re not going to play (China’s) game. We’re playing our game, and we’re not going to allow these cars to come into the U.S. market,” Moreno said. He also said consumer preferences should guide automakers in the adoption of EVs and other new technologies.
The lawmaker’s remarks came during an on-stage conversation with John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. His organization, the top automotive lobbying group in Washington, put on the conference Tuesday, bringing together policymakers, analysts and industry leaders.
Bozzella probed at Moreno’s EV stance: “Do we need to have a balance, though, between supporting our current leadership on internal combustion engines and remaining a cutting-edge technology developer for automotive technologies of the future? Do you worry that we risk becoming sort of an island market if we aren’t keeping up with technology investments?”
The senator was unmoved. “I pushed back on the premise that EV somehow is about innovation,” he said. “Electric vehicles were around in 1910. It’s not like this new technology.”
“I’m all for innovation, but having a car driven by a 2,000-pound battery is not innovation in my mind. Now, maybe at some point in the future, there’s somebody out there that invents something new. Who knows what comes up? But government shouldn’t play the role of putting their hands in the scale.”
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
