If you're buying a Chinese-built car in the US today, there's a good chance it wears the badge of a US domestic brand. But the decisions made to build vehicles in that country are coming back to bite them. The US is imposing bans on cars from China that will soon go into effect, and while the idea was to keep Chinese brands out of the US, domestic brands operating in China are also subject to the new rules. And now, the best-selling model from Lincoln is one of those that will need special permission if Ford wants to keep selling it here. Connected Car Software Ban Starts Soon A ban on most connected car software installed on vehicles built in China was first made law in January 2025, still under the Biden administration. The worry was that vehicles could be collecting data on American owners, and even on US Government facilities. The bans were set to go into effect with software for model year 2027 and hardware for 2030, and the Trump administration kept them in place. For model year 2024, Ford moved production of the Lincoln Nautilus from a plant in Ontario, Canada, to a factory in China. It has been importing every Nautilus from there since, and that added up to 33,744 units last year, a figure that made it the brand's bestseller by around 8,000 vehicles. Come January, when Ford wants to start importing 2027 model year Nautilus SUVs from China, it won't be able to. Unless, that is, it gets approval from the US Commerce Department. Reuters reports that Ford is seeking to get that authorization as one of the few automakers affected. Automakers Are Trembling In Fear Of Incoming Connected Car Ban Automakers are concerned about how soon the rule could go into effect.