The quiet part is now very loud. Ford has publicly refused to accept a US Department of Transportation letter demanding it sever its commercial relationships with Chinese technology partners — and it has done so in language rarely used by a Detroit automaker against a sitting cabinet secretary.
On September 8, 2026, the DOT published a letter Secretary Sean P. Duffy had sent to Ford CEO Jim Farley five days earlier. By September 9, Ford had answered in public, through Chief Communications Officer Mark Truby, calling the letter a "wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines at the expense of a company that has done more for American manufacturing than virtually any other in the nation's history." Ford also said the letter contained "numerous factual errors."
"When a company intentionally chooses to deepen operational dependencies on strategic competitors, it fails to act as the reliable partner the American public and this DOT require."
That line, from Duffy's letter, is the crux. The dispute is no longer about a single supply agreement — it is about who gets to define what counts as an American car company.
What the DOT Actually Objected To
Duffy's letter flagged three specific arrangements, each of which sits at a different point in Ford's value chain:
- CATL battery technology at Marshall, Michigan. Ford's BlueOval Battery Park uses lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell technology licensed from Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) — a company the DOT release notes appears on the Department of War's roster of banned companies. This is the load-bearing objection.
- The Ford–Geely arrangement in Valencia, Spain. Ford has partnered with Geely Auto to build low- and zero-emission vehicles at its Spanish plant, putting a Chinese OEM inside Ford's European industrial footprint.
The Lincoln reshoring timeline. Ford's plan to move Lincoln production out of China by 2030 was described by Duffy as "an unacceptable, multi-year window."*
Duffy's framing was aspirational as much as adversarial: "Iconic American companies, like Ford, are also expected to out-innovate competitors. To that end, they need to chart clear paths to technological self-reliance."
Notably, the release named no penalty, no deadline, and no rulemaking. There is no obvious DOT authority to compel a licensing agreement to be torn up. This is pressure, not regulation — which is precisely why Ford felt able to answer it in kind.
Ford's Counter-Argument: Ownership Is the Line, Not Origin
Ford's rebuttal did not deny the relationships. It disputed their characterisation.
On CATL, Ford's position is that Marshall is "a limited technology-licensing and services agreement, not a joint venture or foreign-owned manufacturing operation." Ford owns the plant. Ford owns the equipment. Ford employs the workforce. The intellectual property is licensed — the way an American manufacturer might license a process from a Japanese or German supplier — and the value-add stays in Michigan.
The plant's own numbers back the employment claim. Ford's June 2026 update on BlueOval Battery Park Michigan reported 500-plus employees already on site, a target of 800 by year-end, and a stated goal of 1,700 American jobs. The facility is producing prismatic LFP cells destined for Ford's affordable midsize electric truck — the first vehicle on the Universal EV Platform — and was on track to ship EV batteries during 2026.
Ford also rejected the suggestion that Farley had proposed facilitating Chinese joint ventures on US soil, and pushed back on the administration's characterisation of the Lincoln timeline.
Why This Fight Matters Beyond Ford
Strip away the personalities and this is an argument about an unresolved contradiction in US industrial policy.
Washington wants three things at once: domestic battery manufacturing at scale, cost-competitive electric vehicles, and zero dependence on Chinese technology. In LFP chemistry specifically, those three goals are not currently compatible. China holds the manufacturing know-how, the process engineering, and the cost curve. A US automaker that wants an affordable electric truck in the near term has three options:
- License Chinese IP and build domestically — Ford's chosen path.
- Build the capability from scratch — slower, more expensive, and years from volume.
- Cede the affordable EV segment entirely — commercially unacceptable while Chinese OEMs scale exports.
Ford picked option one and structured it to keep ownership onshore. The DOT's letter is effectively an argument that option one is still too close to option three in national-security terms.
There is a second-order irony worth noting. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had earlier framed Ford's Lincoln relocation decision as evidence that the administration's tariff strategy was working. Two cabinet departments are therefore holding the same corporate decision up as, respectively, a policy win and a policy failure — which tells you the interagency position on Chinese technology licensing has not actually been settled.
The Escalation Risk
Ford's decision to answer publicly rather than privately is the genuinely new element here. Automakers almost never do this. The calculation appears to be that a letter with no regulatory teeth, released to the press, was itself a public act — and that silence would be read as concession.
The risk is that it invites escalation into areas where the administration does have leverage: connected-vehicle rules covering Chinese hardware and software, tariff classifications on imported components, and the federal certification and procurement processes that touch every manufacturer.
What to watch next:
- Whether DOT follows the letter with an actual rulemaking or information demand, rather than correspondence.
- Whether other automakers with Chinese battery or software dependencies — and there are several — are sent similar letters, or whether Ford was singled out.
- Whether the Marshall plant's 2026 shipping timeline slips, which would hand the DOT's argument a fact base it currently lacks.
- Whether the Lincoln 2030 window is pulled forward under pressure.
For now, the scoreboard reads: one cabinet secretary's letter, one flat public refusal, and no regulatory instrument in play. That is an unusual place for a Detroit automaker to be standing — and an unusually exposed one.
