An article by Kevin Brunelli, a nonresident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, titled “American Automakers Need Chinese Batteries” appeared in Foreign Policy Magazine on November 14, 2025. In the article, Mr. Brunelli argues that China generally, and CATL in particular, have pulled far ahead in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. He suggests that unless American automobile manufacturers are allowed to partner with Chinese battery suppliers such as CATL, the U.S. automobile industry, which currently employs about 4 million Americans, faces a bleak and potentially disastrous future.
Much of what Mr. Brunelli suggests in his article is valid. Access to low cost, high quality EV batteries is essential to the future of U.S. carmakers. If Chinese carmakers have long-term access to higher quality and lower cost batteries than U.S. carmakers, the U.S. automotive industry will be in grave trouble. NAATBatt has long warned that “He who makes the batteries will one day make the cars.” In fact, that was one of NAATBatt’s original tag lines in 2009 (a tag line that generated considerable push-back from major U.S. auto companies at the time).
Yet while Mr. Brunelli is correct in suggesting that U.S. automakers need access to the best and lowest cost EV batteries and that the best and lowest cost EV batteries today are made in China, there is a danger that if U.S. and other auto makers come to rely exclusively or nearly exclusively on Chinese batteries, they will be facilitating the creation of a Chinese battery cartel. That cartel, if it forms and exercises its resulting market power, can push U.S. and other non-Chinese car makers out of the vehicle market just as effectively as if those carmakers could not compete on price.
U.S. policy today seems focused on keeping Chinese batteries, battery technology and EV’s out of the U.S. market. I agree with Mr. Brunelli that this focus is misplaced. The focus should be less on keeping Chinese products out of the U.S. than on making sure that the Chinese products that do come in face viable competition from multiple other sources of supply. U.S. battery policy should focus less on local protectionism than on squarely preventing the “cartelization” of the battery market.
Protecting U.S. companies and consumers from the dangers of a cartel is not a new concern. NAATBatt was formed 18 years ago for the purpose of helping to break the power of OPEC over the U.S. economy by introducing another form of fuel to the vehicle sector. This purpose was soon overshadowed by the fight against climate change. But first and foremost, NAATBatt was about remediating the impact of a foreign oil cartel on the U.S. economy.
There are two ways to prevent the cartelization of advanced battery supply in North America. The first is to support the development of multiple sources of battery manufacturing, battery material and battery technology all around the world. While it would be most beneficial if those sources were located in North America, from the standpoint of fighting cartelization, it does not matter from where those competing supplies come. It just matters those sources of competing supplies exist. To that end, the U.S. should be just as interested in supporting the advanced battery industries in Korea and Japan as it should be in building battery manufacturing plants in North America (batteries for defense and critical infrastructure applications, of course, being a different issue).
The second way to prevent the cartelization of batteries is to promote diversity in battery technology. NAATBatt’s 2025 Sodium-Zinc Battery Workshop recently concluded in Los Angeles. Many of the workshop presentations pointed out that though sodium and zinc-based technologies have received only a fraction of the attention and investment of lithium-based batteries, they can perform many of the same energy storage applications as can lithium-ion. Several speakers noted that it is not necessary, for example, that sodium-ion batteries be better than lithium-ion batteries. It is only necessary that they be able to power some of the same applications as lithium-ion batteries at a price that is at least somewhat competitive. The price does not really need to be lower. It is the presence of a viable alternative to lithium that matters. For it is the mere existence of alternatives that prevents cartels from forming and exercising harmful market power.
So the good news is that the U.S. advanced battery industry should be able to have its cake and eat it too. There should be nothing wrong with importing Chinese batteries or battery-related technology. U.S. automakers probably need to do so, at least in the short term. But in so doing, U.S. industry and the U.S. government must be keenly focused on making sure that Chinese battery companies have viable competitors in the U.S. market and that U.S. battery customers have practical technological alternatives to lithium-ion technology.