America has fallen far behind China in the electric vehicle race. Can it catch up?

How big is China’s EV industry? 
Chinese automakers last year made nearly 16 million electric vehicles, a whopping 75% of all EVs sold globally. The U.S. produced only 5%. More than half of new cars sold in China are now EVs—here it’s about 10%— and those vehicles are in heavy demand around the world: Tariffs of up to 127.5% have kept them out of the U.S., but 80% of EVs sold in Latin America are Chinese, as are 75% in Southeast Asia, and 57% in Australia. It’s a staggering turnaround for China, which in 2000 made only 2 million cars a year, all of them gas-powered. Today, Chinese EVs impress with their affordability—budget models run as low as $7,800, compared with $29,000 for a Chevrolet Bolt in the U.S.—reliability, battery range, and luxury features that come as standard, such as massage chairs, big screens, and built-in refrigerators. With every major nation except the U.S. shifting from gas- to battery-powered cars, a move that’s been accelerated by the Iran war driving up oil prices, China’s dominance is expected to grow. “We’ve reached a genuinely existential moment” for U.S. automakers, said Stephen Ezell of the Washington-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

How did China become an EV power? 
It began in 2001, when Beijing realized EVs would help it “solve multiple problems at the same time,” said China-based auto analyst Bill Russo: “energy security, environmental pollution concerns, and industrial competitiveness.” It pumped more than $230 billion into the EV sector over 15 years, funding new automakers and new battery and charging technologies. Beijing also offered EV buyers rebates and tax incentives, constructed the world’s largest network of public charging stations, and helped automakers build vertically integrated supply chains. BYD, which overtook Tesla last year as the world’s top EV producer, mines its own lithium, makes its own batteries and semiconductors, and even exports cars on its own ships. Recognizing the challenge, President Barack Obama in 2009 launched a $2.4 billion grant program to boost EV development in the U.S.; a $465 million loan helped Tesla get its breakout Model S to market. Under President Joe Biden, the federal government put $7.5 billion toward charging networks and offered billions more in incentives for buyers and automakers. Many of those efforts were scrapped following President Trump’s return to the White House last year.

What did Trump do?
Calling climate change a “con job,” Trump signed into law a GOP mega-bill that nixed a $7,500 tax credit for new EV buyers. His administration has dismantled clean-air regulations and fuel economy standards that spurred carmakers to move toward EVs; it has also challenged states’ authority to set their own tougher standards. “You’re not going to be forced to make all those cars,” Trump said last year, while signing a law aimed at killing rules from California, which would phase out the sale of new gas-only cars by 2035. EV sales had already stalled in the U.S. before those actions, with potential buyers discouraged by high prices and concerns over range and charging access. But the withdrawal of federal support caused the market to slump, with new EV sales plunging 27% year over year in the first three months of 2026. 

How have U.S. automakers responded? 
Starting in December, the so-called Big Three— Ford, GM, and Stellantis, owner of Chrysler and Jeep—announced more than $52 billion in write-downs on EV-related losses, and set about what GM called a “strategic realignment.” The companies canceled planned EV models; stopped production of current ones, such as Ford’s F-150 Lightning pickup; and repurposed their battery plants for other uses, including making batteries for data centers. The retreat has alarmed industry analysts, who say U.S. automakers are dooming themselves to irrelevance by doubling down on gas-guzzlers.

What’s at stake? 
The U.S. auto industry generates $1.2 trillion each year, nearly 5% of GDP, and directly employs some 7.4 million Americans. It indirectly supports millions more jobs. To safeguard the industry, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have rallied behind legislation that would ban companies with more than 15% Chinese ownership from selling cars in the U.S. “We are not competing on a level playing field when China subsidizes its manufacturers” and “uses slave labor,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.). Some analysts call protectionism a losing cause. They suspect public demand for Chinese cars will ultimately prove too great, especially as they proliferate in Mexico and Canada, which in January began letting in up to 49,000 Chinese EVs annually. That same month, Trump expressed openness to letting Chinese firms make cars here so long as they use American workers and inputs. Proponents say that approach would light a fire under U.S. carmakers and build their knowledge and capabilities while driving up consumer demand for EVs.

Are U.S. carmakers ready for that? 
Not yet. Some are developing smaller, cheaper EVs they hope will challenge Beijing’s offerings; Ford is rolling out a $30,000 midsize pickup EV next year. The Detroit giant is also trying to grow its EV skills by partnering with Chinese firm Geely on models for the European market, while attempting to strengthen its operations here at home. Ford is pitching the Trump administration on a plan that would let Chinese automakers into the U.S. only through joint ventures in which an American firm would hold the controlling stake. That setup would mirror the deals Beijing struck decades ago with Western automakers eager to enter the Chinese market. Ford CEO Jim Farley, who in 2024 said he’d been driving a “fantastic” Xiaomi SU7 sedan for six months, believes U.S. firms have no choice but to learn from China. “You don’t become fit like the rest of the Chinese,” he said, “you aren’t going to be around much longer.”

“Don’t be weird about this,” AOC begged us. But “of course everyone got super weird,” said Jill Filipovic in Slate. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), 36, announced last week that she was freezing her eggs. A day later, she refused to rule out a presidential run. Conservative pundits pounced, arguing that she should prioritize motherhood over her career and denouncing her livestreams of daily hormone injections as oversharing. One actually said she was “glamorizing the lie that women can have it all.” In their universe, there’s “only one correct way” to be a mother, and that’s “married at a young age to a breadwinner man upon whom you are wholly dependent.” But Ocasio-Cortez, who reportedly split from her fiancé over a year ago, is making a choice that many women consider—and demystifying the process along the way. One of the country’s most prominent lawmakers, the progressive heroine has already “totally changed the game,” not just for young women but for all young politicians. And she’s come this far partly “because she’s been able to make her own choices” about whether and when to have children.

Many women don’t get that chance, though, because insurance often doesn’t cover egg freezing, said Miranda Yaver in MS.now. AOC says she’s paying some $9,000 out of pocket. For most women, that’s “a prohibitive price to take control of their lives.” By being so open about her process, including its costs and indignities, Ocasio-Cortez has started a national conversation about “the need to make this care meaningfully accessible for everyday Americans” and how fertility access is connected to the Right’s “efforts to roll back reproductive autonomy.” Already, more than 1 in 5 births are to women over 34, and egg freezing will only become more popular as people have children later in life. The outrage over AOC’s announcement is “a sign of how far we still have to go.”

Yet the response to AOC’s revelation “didn’t fall on strictly partisan lines,” said Kara Voght in The Wall Street Journal. While far-right commentators like The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh called it “totally backwards,” other conservatives, such as pronatalist Katie Miller, applauded. Boosting our falling birth rate “has become a rallying point for Republicans,” and older motherhood through medical intervention is seen as better than no motherhood at all. This intervention, though, may be a false hope, said Caitlin Flanagan in The Free Press. Someone with eggs frozen at, say, age 38 has just a 51% chance of eventually having a live birth. “The harsh truth is that a 36-year-old who wants a baby should probably start trying to get pregnant now.”

In the mid-1970s, Antonio Banderas took a stand against tyranny, said Helen Rosner in The New Yorker. Together with friends in the southern Spanish city of Málaga, the young actor put on a radical play to protest the arrest of a Barcelona theater group by the authoritarian regime of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Banderas took to the stage as a mime with a white face and black tears. Part way through the performance, he recalls, he saw “something shiny in the wings of the theater. It turns out [it] was the helmets of the cops.” When the curtain went down, the police handcuffed all the actors. Taken to a police station, Banderas saw a familiar face. “It was very funny. My father finished his life being a sheriff in Málaga, but at the time he was in the secret police.” Banderas’ father initially didn’t recognize him, “with my strange costume and painted white face,” but when he did, he told his son to clean up and go home. Banderas refused to leave without his friends and got them freed as well. Banderas, now 66, thinks his troupe got off easy because “the regime was dissolving. The country wanted to be democratic.” And following Franco’s death in 1975, “that’s exactly what happened. That was beautiful—the Transition. Everything exploded in color. Nobody was talking about the past anymore; everybody was talking about the future. We were very proud to be called Spaniards.”