Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s trip to Ottawa, the arrival of Chinese-made electric vehicles in Canada, bipartisan national security alarms, and the role of U.S. think tanks are all woven together in a story about politics, trade, and optics.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is heading to Canada this weekend to join a gathering of center-left figures organized around a single question: how to beat conservatives on pocketbook issues. The summit is hosted by the Center for American Progress and will include Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney among other left-leaning participants. The timing puts a Michigan senator in the same room as a foreign leader who recently announced a “new strategic partnership” with China on January 16, 2026.
Slotkin is often mentioned as a potential 2028 presidential contender, and this trip raises immediate political questions. The summit’s stated focus is “how to battle right-wing politicians on affordability,” and attendees include prominent Democrats like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. CAP President Neera Tanden summed up the tone bluntly with the question, “How do we fight the authoritarian right?”
The backdrop makes the choice of interlocutors hard to ignore. Carney’s government has pushed for a reorientation of trade ties and framed closer economic engagement with China as an opportunity. Ottawa announced terms allowing up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into Canada at a most-favored-nation tariff rate of 6.1 percent, a move pitched as a way to spur joint-venture investment and expand an EV supply chain in Canada.
Those Chinese EVs have already started arriving. On May 7, the first shipment of 18 Geely-owned Lotus Eletre SUVs landed in Canada, an opening move that could precede a much larger influx. For a Michigan senator, whose state depends on domestic auto jobs and a competitive manufacturing base, the optics of sitting down with Carney at this moment are striking. Voters in auto states care about jobs and supply chains more than international seminar buzz.
Concerns about Chinese-made vehicles are bipartisan and specific. In December 2025, the House Select Committee on China held a hearing titled “Trojan Horse: China’s Auto Threat to America.” Committee Chairman John Moolenaar warned that modern cars could become “potential spy platforms with a kill switch inside,” given their cameras, sensors, microphones, and internet connectivity.
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi made blunt economic points in the same hearing, saying China has used “A familiar playbook of forced joint ventures, intellectual property theft, overproduction and dumping to dominate the auto sector.” Lawmakers described pricing that can be “below what it would even cost to make a car,” a tactic that undercuts competitors when a state-backed industrial machine decides to crush them.
Security experts have added forceful warnings about components and software. A former British diplomat called cellular modules in connected vehicles “the gateway” to transportation systems, and industry executives compared Chinese-made cars to “the same kinds of risks in the physical world that TikTok represents in the digital world.” Those are not partisan talking points; they are technical alarms coming from people who study vulnerabilities.
Slotkin’s trip also comes after other high-profile Democratic visits to Canada, including a speech by former President Barack Obama in Toronto. Those back-to-back appearances create a perception of a Democratic charm offensive north of the border, at a moment when Washington and Ottawa are negotiating trade frictions and a pivot in Canadian economic orientation. For critics, that sequence looks coordinated rather than coincidental.
Slotkin brings baggage into the conversation. She previously appeared in a video telling military personnel they could “refuse illegal orders,” later acknowledging on ABC’s This Week that, to her knowledge, Trump had not issued illegal orders. That episode, followed by a vulgar appeal that urged Democrats to “f***ing retake the flag”, has drawn sharp criticism and raised questions about judgment and tone.
The summit was organized by the Center for American Progress, a group with funding ties that critics say merit scrutiny. When a think tank with deep funding convenes presidential hopefuls and a foreign leader to discuss strategy, people notice who bankrolls the conversation and how those agendas line up with political priorities back home. None of this is illegal, but voters evaluate optics and outcomes.
At stake are jobs, national security, and political strategy. Michigan’s economy depends on a resilient auto sector and workers who cannot compete against subsidized dumping without consequences. Bipartisan alarms about technical vulnerabilities and predatory pricing deserve a seat at any discussion about opening markets. When a U.S. senator from the nation’s auto heartland meets with a prime minister who has just loosened the door to tens of thousands of Chinese-made cars, the picture voters see matters.
