General Motors spent $11 million lobbying Washington in the first half of 2026 alone.
Now Ted Cruz says he knows exactly what that money bought.
Cruz just named GM by name – on the record – and what he said should make every American paying attention furious.
Chinese Cars Are Surveillance Packages on Wheels and GM Is Using That Fear to Its Advantage
Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) wasn't exaggerating when he called Chinese cars "automotive fentanyl."
Every new car rolling off a lot today is a rolling surveillance platform – Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, satellite links, all of it accessible to whoever controls the software.
When that software has roots in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party gets access to where you drive, who you call, and according to Moreno, the ability to take over braking, steering, and acceleration remotely.
The Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 passed the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously on July 22 to permanently wall that threat out of America.
Senator Ted Cruz voted yes.
Then he told the entire hearing room that General Motors had been working the bill from the inside – and not entirely for national security reasons.
Ted Cruz Named GM at the Hearing and the Company Could Not Deny It
Cruz chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
He told the markup that GM had lobbied aggressively for the bill's 15 percent Chinese ownership threshold – not to stop Beijing's surveillance apparatus, but to push Mercedes-Benz out of the American market and hand Cadillac a cleaner runway.
"GM is pushing for this provision to get Mercedes-Benz out of the market," Cruz said on the record.
The German automaker carries roughly 20 percent passive Chinese investment – 9.98 percent from Chinese state-owned BAIC and 9.69 percent from Geely founder Li Shufu.
Mercedes does not build cars for the CCP. Chinese investors hold passive minority stakes with no board control and no technology transfer. That is not a national security threat – that is a competitor GM wants gone.
Cruz added that Congress "would never consider" banning Mercedes-Benz sales outright and said the ownership provision has to change before the full Senate votes.
GM's response: the legislation "isn't about any individual automaker" and GM "supports policies that protect and strengthen American manufacturing."
They did not deny pushing for the provision.
How GM Engineered the Chinese Vehicle Ban Fine Print to Crush Its Competition
Cruz didn't stop at the ownership cap.
He also flagged a domestic battery supply mandate buried in the same bill – one that would force competing automakers to source batteries from GM, injecting up to $5,000 in extra manufacturing costs per vehicle.
Rivian moved to strip it. The amendment failed.
Meanwhile GM spent the past year surgically dismantling its own overseas exposure – moving production of the China-built Buick Envision to the United States for the 2028 model year – which puts the company perfectly inside every compliance window the bill creates.
The Chinese vehicle threat is real. Beijing subsidizes its automakers to flood global markets and undercut American workers – Senator Slotkin called it the CCP's playbook of "heavily subsidizing their product and underselling the competition."
Roughly 8 million Chinese-made vehicles enter global markets every year, and the national security case for keeping that surveillance infrastructure off American roads is airtight.
What Cruz is alleging is that GM's lobbyists took that legitimate threat and quietly engineered the fine print to their own advantage while the Senate focused on Beijing.
Congress has seen this move before – the auto industry ran the same playbook against Japanese imports in the 1980s, using trade policy arguments to shelter Detroit from competition it couldn't beat on the showroom floor.
GM dressed up a competitive power grab in a national security bill and sent it to Washington with $11 million behind it.
The bill still needs the full Senate and the House. Cruz says the ownership provision changes before that happens. Whether GM's lobbying army has anything to say about that is the next fight.
Sources:
- "Senate Committee Advances Bill to Codify Ban on Chinese Smart Vehicles," The Epoch Times, July 22, 2026.
- "Connected Vehicle Security Act Aims to Combat 'Automotive Fentanyl,'" Landline Media, July 24, 2026.
- "Government Says GM Is Gunning to Get Mercedes Banned From America," AutoGuide, July 23, 2026.
- "General Motors Posts Record Lobbying Spending in Early 2026," NOTUS, April 21, 2026.
- Bernie Moreno, Senate Commerce Committee Markup Hearing, July 22, 2026.