Toyota’s Washington Lobby Wants Chinese Cars Locked Out for Good

The trade group that speaks for Toyota in Washington has asked Congress to pass a permanent ban on Chinese vehicles before the current session ends in December.

Lawmakers return next week for a short post-election session, and the group wants the ban on the agenda for it.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, whose members include Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen, argues that Chinese automakers carry a surveillance risk and have already swamped Europe with subsidized cars. A rule the Biden administration put in place in early 2025 effectively bars Chinese automakers from selling or building passenger vehicles in the United States over concerns that the cars could send driver data to China, and tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles stand above 100 percent. The group wants that policy written into law rather than left to a regulation that a future administration could rewrite.

The request was made on Monday, November 2, according to Reuters, which quoted Alliance chief executive John Bozzella saying that "we need to protect the U.S. market from a flood of Chinese imports that carry surveillance risk." He said Congress should "stop Chinese automakers from doing here what they’ve gotten away with in Europe," and pointed to the European Union, which he said imported more than 1.1 million vehicles from China in the first eight months of 2026, more than it took in all of 2025. Toyota has not commented on its own, and the position comes from the trade group rather than from the company.

The bill the Alliance is pushing has been waiting since the summer. A Senate committee passed it in July, and a House version has more than 100 co-sponsors, but its Senate sponsors agreed in September to hold off on a fast-track push until November. The measure is the Connected Vehicle Security Act, S.4429, which would bar vehicles, parts and software made in China or in partnership with it and give the Commerce Department the job of identifying and blocking high-risk vehicle technology. Some congressional aides and auto lobbyists told Reuters that if Democrats take control of Congress in this week’s midterm elections, there may not be enough time to pass the ban before the session ends.

The industry’s worry runs in two directions. President Trump told Fox News in September that he would accept Chinese car companies building cars in the United States, a remark Reuters said alarmed automakers. China’s foreign ministry, for its part, has previously urged Washington "to respect the laws of the market economy and principles of fair competition" and has called earlier proposals aimed at Chinese companies "unreasonable suppression."

This is the group’s second run at the same goal in two months. In a September 3 letter to congressional leaders, reported by CNBC, the Alliance asked for a permanent ban on the sale, import and manufacture of Chinese connected vehicles, hardware and software before Congress adjourns on January 3, with Bozzella writing that Chinese automakers are "dumping subsidized vehicles with connected software and hardware around the world." CNBC noted at the time that the bill the Senate committee advanced could bar Mercedes-Benz, an Alliance member, from the US market because Chinese investors hold nearly 20 percent of the German automaker.

For Toyota’s US operations the practical effect is to keep the market the company already dominates in hybrids closed to the one group of rivals that undercuts it on price. The company builds the bulk of what it sells here in its own American plants, from Kentucky and Indiana to Texas and Mississippi, and a permanent statutory ban would remove the risk that a change of administration or a trade deal reopens the door to Chinese-built cars without warning. Toyota also sells and builds cars in China through joint ventures, which is the awkward part of asking Congress to shut Chinese brands out of the United States.

The Toyota Report Take

Toyota’s lobby is asking for insurance against a president of its own party. The Biden rule already does what the Alliance wants, and the 100 percent tariff does the rest, so the only reason to put it in statute now is that Trump has said out loud he would let BYD build here, and automakers believe him. That makes this less a national-security filing than a bet that Congress is a steadier partner than the White House. The risk for Toyota is reputational rather than financial. It is the largest foreign automaker in America and one of the largest foreign automakers in China, and a company that built its US business on access to an open market is now paying dues to a group arguing that the next entrant should be kept out by law. The argument has merit on data security, but the trade-group route lets Toyota hold both positions at once without having to say either one itself.