250% tariffs and broad security restrictions have largely kept Chinese EVs, drones and robots out of the US market, leaving many Americans cut off from technologies the report says are already globally competitive.
The report argues that blanket exclusion now hurts US competitiveness more than it protects it, because Chinese firms have moved beyond low-cost manufacturing into leadership in EVs, batteries, robotics and other frontier industries.
Washington is urged to replace broad bans with tightly conditioned access—using CFIUS and sector regulators to require data localization, local partnerships, supply-chain diversification, workforce training and technology transfer where risks can be mitigated.
China’s 2019 opening to Tesla is cited as the model: Beijing paired market access with local data rules and supply-chain localization, helping Tesla scale while strengthening Chinese suppliers that later challenged it globally.
The broader warning is that allied efforts to build a China-free technology bloc have largely fallen short, making selective openness a more realistic path if the US wants industrial capacity without deeper technological isolation.
Could allowing Chinese tech giants conditional access to the US market actually be the secret weapon to saving American industrial dominance?
If foreign electric vehicles bypass US tariffs through neighboring countries, will selective openness become an unavoidable reality rather than a policy choice?
Can regulators truly build a firewall around foreign AI, or is managed openness just a Trojan horse for critical infrastructure vulnerabilities?