Ford’s Landmark CATL Deal Shows Way for Trump, Xi to Deepen Ties

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Now it’s on the up. New housing developments are underway at a rate not seen in decades. Local businesses like Dark Horse Brewing Co. and Pastrami Joe’s Deli are hiring, in anticipation of a sustained boost once the plant opens.

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They’re already doing good business from the influx of construction workers like Dominic Tromley, who’s working on the fencing around BlueOval. Tromley says he’s making at least double the $29 an hour he got from his last job in Tennessee, and likes living in Marshall because it helps him save: “You’re not home partying, you’re not spending the money.” 

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Chinese experts are already in town too, to run training courses for incoming employees, says Scott Davis, chief executive of BlueOval in Marshall. 

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A pair of Chinese engineers strolled down Michigan Avenue, where two Chinese restaurants offered Americanized take-out fare. They said they’d be in town for around six weeks and hadn’t encountered any issues, though they were aware of some tensions in the community.

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There’s been a smattering of local opposition since early on. Demonstrators tend to gather around the town center’s Brooks Memorial Fountain Park, which is modeled after the Temple of Love in Versailles, on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Just two people were there with signs on the day Bloomberg visited, though several passing cars honked approvingly.

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The China factor is among the objections cited by protesters like Barry Wayne Adams — “CATL is a creation of the Chinese Communist Party,” he says — but doesn’t seem to be the dominant one.

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“We’re objecting to the catastrophic environmental destruction and the loss of a projected 3,000 acres of the most productive farmland in the county,” the 71-year-old Adams says. BlueOval is only one part of a bigger campus that local officials are targeting for greenfield investments.  

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A final ruling in a years-long legal dispute about re-zoning of the land is still pending. There’s been close scrutiny in the nation’s capital, too — and there, it’s all about China.

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Back in February 2023, when the plant was first announced, then Senator Marco Rubio asked the Biden administration to review the deal, saying it would “only deepen US reliance on the Chinese Communist Party for battery tech.” Such concerns still linger.

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In a January letter to Ford, John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, called on the carmaker to provide detailed information about the deal with CATL, and to disclose any planned expansion in ties. A Ford official said the company didn’t share the requested documents for competitive reasons, but had engaged in dialogue with the committee to answer its questions.  

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While the Washington debate over Chinese investment often revolves around national security or supply-chain dependence, the bigger risk is pretending American companies can go it alone, according to Bill Russo, a longtime China auto analyst and former Chrysler executive now based in Shanghai.

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“There is no road to the future of electric mobility that doesn’t involve the Chinese supply chain,” Russo says. Batteries are the most expensive piece of an EV, and China has about 80% of world capacity — half of that through CATL alone, he says. “You need to be able to put a little bit of the DNA of that global supply chain into your own backyard.”

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That need has triggered debates in many places — Canada and Europe, as well as the US — about how to harness the tech knowhow of Chinese auto firms so that local ones can learn from it, and avoid losing markets to more sophisticated rivals.

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In some ways it’s the mirror image of a dynamic that played out decades ago. Back then many Asian economies were trying to build their own car industries through tie-ins with top Western firms, which had the cutting-edge tech. The challenge was to figure out models for collaboration that would help local producers in Asia close the gap. Now the shoe’s on the other foot.