How Years of Tricky Talks Sealed Ford’s Deal with a Chinese Battery Maker

Ford Motor Co.’s deal to build a $3.5 billion electric-vehicle battery plant using Chinese technology capped two years of delicate talks that survived political shocks on both sides of the Pacific.

When Ford and China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd first began talking in early 2021 about building batteries together in North America, a political firestorm seemed like a distant prospect, according to people familiar with the negotiations. That soon changed.