April 25, 2025: Lead battery industry leaders in the US have backed calls by US president Donald Trump for a new partnership between the government, industry and academia to accelerate innovation.

Trump set out his vision in a ‘roadmap’ sent on March 26 to the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios.

The president said scientific progress and technological innovation were the “twin engines that powered the American century”. 

Battery Council International, in an open letter to the president released on April 17, has reiterated its “long-standing commitment and support for such powerful partnerships”.

BCI is also a non-partisan organization. It says it will work with whichever administration has been elected in the US as well as Congress, and with every administration to pursue its goal of supporting and growing battery manufacturing and recycling in the US.

BCI highlighted the “brutal reality” of unfair competition from countries such as China and said US legislation and regulation in the past few years had put the domestic battery industry at a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, rival nations have poured trillions of dollars into R&D “in a desperate bid to match the might of the US economy and our national excellence in battery technology and energy storage innovation”.

The trade body praised the Trump administration’s commitment to using the scientific prowess of the country’s national laboratories to support increased investments in American innovation and economic growth.

“We agree with you that those investments will pay dividends for generations,” BCI said.

With responsible and targeted use of research facilities at the labs — to support commercially focused energy storage R&D — US manufacturers will “always win in a fair fight on a level playing field”.

“The American private sector can and does innovate independently. But the brutal reality is that many of our economic adversaries, most notably China, are not interested in a fair fight right now.”

Batteries International reported earlier this month that the US was on course to include foreign battery material producers in a new round of tariffs — as Trump said he was determined to stop the country being exploited by overseas supply chain dominance.

BCI’s letter in full is online.