Democratic U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan has introduced a bill to allow the U.S. commerce secretary to ban Chinese car imports and car parts if they're deemed a national security threat.
It's the first bill Slotkin has led since she took office in January.
Slotkin said there are risks to American security interests from the sophisticated devices often found in electric cars made by Chinese manufacturers.
"3D mapping information in real time, lidar information, geolocation of specific drivers for specific sensitive sites — all of this data is useful to China potentially if we ever had a conflict of any kind with the Chinese," she said in a zoom press conference from Washington.
Slotkin said Chinese cars are also an economic threat because the Chinese government heavily subsidizes their manufacture.
"I've said publicly that I would throw my body in front of the bus to prevent Chinese vehicles from flooding the American market, posing of course a threat to our economic security, underselling every other type of vehicle, including the vehicles made in Michigan, by American companies."
Slotkin also took a few questions during the zoom call, including about the Trump administration's revocation of the legal status of foreign students at Michigan universities for what appeared to be exercising free speech.
Slotkin said the students appeared to have done everything "by the book." "I just think it's completely contrary to how our democracy works and completely contrary to the idea of open dialog in our university campuses. So I have real concerns about it, both in Michigan, also across the country," she said.
Slotkin was also asked to comment on Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer's initially convivial Wednesday meeting in the White House, as she and Republican Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall discussed the problem of invasive carp in the Great Lakes with the president, as well as the importance of the Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan.
But later, Whitmer was photographed staring at the floor with a frozen expression on her face, standing at the rear of the room behind a bank of cameras, as Trump signed executive orders — one targeting a law firm that represented Dominion Voting Systems in its successful defamation lawsuit against Fox News, and one directing the U.S. Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation of Miles Taylor, a former Trump official who penned an anonmyous op-ed critical of Trump in the New York Times in Trump's first term.
"Obviously the executive orders that he announced from the Oval Office, I deeply disagree with," Slotkin said. "And she said the same after the fact, but I think, you know, going into the Oval Office seems like a pretty chaotic experience. And she was trying to advocate for Michigan as best she could."
