LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) — Ford CEO Jim Farley says the automaker has been forced to idle multiple plants over the past three weeks—not due to strikes or chips, but China.

Currently, the Dearborn-based company is running short on rare-earth magnets, which power everything from speaker systems to seat motors, and has no domestic source to tap.

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 “We cannot get any high-power magnets without China,” Farley said on June 27 at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “And we can’t make that.”

The comments come as the U.S. Treasury announced a new trade deal with China aimed at expediting rare-earth exports, according to The Detroit News. But Farley says the bigger issue is America’s overreliance on foreign supply chains—and a shrinking essential workforce back home.

To address both, Ford will host a “Ford Pro Accelerate” summit in late September at Detroit’s Michigan Central Station, bringing together leaders from business, government, and technology to brainstorm ways to support and grow the industries that, as Farley put it, “build, fix, or move” everything in the economy.

“It’s really the backbone of our society,” Farley said. According to a joint report from Ford and the Aspen Institute, that sector accounts for $12 trillion in economic activity and nearly 100 million jobs. 

Farley argued that fixing roads, power grids, and construction sites won’t wait—and without a pipeline of tradesmen and women, Americans could soon be paying the price. “This is going to be painfully expensive to fix when it all falls apart,” he said.

Ford’s own future is wrapped up in the challenge.

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Its battery plant under construction in Marshall, Michigan, is licensing technology from Chinese firm Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) to build lithium-iron-phosphate batteries starting next year. A pending GOP-backed federal budget bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” could strip tax credits from such partnerships, raising questions about the plant’s viability.

Farley said collaboration with China remains necessary—for now—but should not be permanent.

 “We just need to be more humble as a country,” Farley said. “They do things really well. But we can’t be so obsessed with ‘China’s the enemy’ that we aren’t humble enough to set up those business structures … and bring that know-how back to the home company, Ford.”

In the meantime, he’s urging the U.S. to ramp up vocational training, streamline permitting, and build out apprenticeships like Germany’s—where teens start learning trades in junior high.

As Farley put it, if Ford—and the country—wants to bring manufacturing home, “we better treat it with the respect it deserves. We haven’t.”