Two Days After Calling It a 'Baseless Rumor,' Trump Says Chinese Car Plants in America Are Fine — Ten Days Before Xi Arrives

Trump told Fox News on September 11: "If China wants to come to America and open factories to make cars, I'm fine with it."

His reasoning was the one he always gives: "Japan did that, and they hire our people. The most important thing is that they hire our people." The single red line he drew was geographic — Chinese automakers building in Mexico and shipping finished cars north "will not be accepted."

Two days earlier, the position had officially been a fiction. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said on September 9 that rumors were circulating of Trump preparing to allow Chinese car sales as part of a China negotiation, calling it "a strategic mistake." Trump's response then: "a totally baseless rumor," insisting he had blocked Chinese cars all along.

The Xi summit in Washington is roughly ten days away.

What This Would Actually Change

The current wall is high and double-layered: Biden-era connected-vehicle rules that effectively prohibit Chinese passenger-car production and sales in the US, plus tariffs above 100% on Chinese EVs. Trump inherited the wall and, until Thursday, claimed it as his own.

The US industry wants it made permanent. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation — the trade group spanning nearly every major automaker operating in America — wrote to Congress last week urging passage of a permanent statutory ban this year, arguing China's auto industry is built on subsidies, unfair trade, and stolen IP.

So the sequence is: the industry asks Congress to lock the door forever, a Michigan Democrat warns the president is about to unlock it, the president denies the key exists — and then, on television, describes turning it.

The unsettling part for Detroit is that Trump's position is internally consistent. His entire tariff architecture — "make it in the USA, zero tariff", as he put it when hitting Canadian auto plants — treats production location and American jobs as the only variables that matter. By that logic, a BYD plant in Ohio employing five thousand Americans is a win, exactly as Japanese transplants were in the 1980s. What the logic does not price is what the industry actually fears: the world's most efficient EV manufacturers competing on US soil, tariff-immune, against incumbents whose EV programs are already unprofitable. Protection for American workers and protection for American automakers are different policies, and Trump just showed which one he holds.

China: Threat or Chip, Depending on the Trade

Set this beside the rest of the month and the pattern sharpens. When data-center opponents or AI safety researchers raise objections, China is the existential threat that overrides them. When Xi is ten days out and a deliverable is needed, Chinese factories on American soil are "fine."

The reconciliation is that China-as-threat is an instrument, not a conviction. The consistent core is jobs-and-location mercantilism; the security framing gets deployed when it serves that core and shelved when it doesn't. Congress, which is being asked to write the China car ban into statute, now has to legislate around a president who may trade the ban away — and the administration's own China entanglements give the industry little comfort about where the line will hold.

What It Means for Markets

Nothing is signed, and "I'm fine with it" is not a policy instrument. But ten days before a summit, it is an opening position — and markets should treat it as the White House signaling what is on the table.