Alabama spent this week celebrating a number: $15.6 billion. That’s the total two auto industry trade groups say international automakers have invested in the state since Mercedes-Benz opened its first U.S. plant near Tuscaloosa in 1997. It’s a genuinely impressive figure, and Alabama has earned the right to brag about it. It’s also, as of the same week, attached to a company a Senate committee just voted to potentially bar from selling cars in America at all. The new economic impact report, released by Autos Drive America and the American International Automobile Dealers Association, tallies more than three decades of investment from Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing, and Toyota. Last year alone, those companies employed 105,806 people in Alabama, paid out roughly $8.3 billion in wages, and built 1.16 million vehicles, 21 of which were exported to 36 countries. Nobody at that announcement mentioned what was happening two floors up in Washington. On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee advanced the Connected Vehicle Security Act, a bill written to keep Chinese connected-vehicle technology out of the United States. It passed by voice vote. Buried in its text is a provision that has nothing to do with where a car is built, and everything to do with who owns the company that builds it. The bill would bar any automaker from selling connected vehicles in the U.S. if a foreign adversary — China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran — owns more than 15 percent of the company. It’s aimed squarely at China, which now exports roughly 8 million vehicles a year and has become the industry’s newest and most feared competitor. Nobody in Washington is losing sleep over Mercedes-Benz stealing market share from Detroit. Here’s the problem. Mercedes-Benz Group AG’s two largest shareholders are the state-owned Chinese automaker BAIC, holding 9.98