By Michael Martina and Chris Kirkham

(Reuters) – Washington’s addition of CATL to a list of firms it says work with China’s military could put Tesla founder Elon Musk in a tight spot, challenging how he balances his role in the Trump administration with his ties to China.

CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, is a major supplier of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries to Tesla for its Shanghai factory, the U.S. automaker’s largest. Tesla has been exporting these cars equipped with CATL batteries to other markets such as Europe and Canada.

Lawmakers have decried some of CATL’s battery storage projects across the United States, arguing they represent potential security threats. The U.S. market accounted for 4% and 35% of CATL’s electric vehicle (EV) and electric storage systems (ESS) batteries, respectively, in 2023, according to Citi estimates.

The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday designated CATL and other Chinese companies including tech giant Tencent Holdings as linked to China’s military. While the designation does not involve any restrictions on CATL’s business, it can be a blow to the reputations of affected companies and serves as a stark warning to U.S. entities about the risks of doing business with them. It could also add pressure on the U.S. Treasury Department to sanction the companies.

Tesla and CATL are working on an agreement to license CATL technology for battery production in Nevada. A person familiar with the matter said that the deal is expected to launch in 2025.

CATL is also set to supply battery cells and packs to Tesla’s Shanghai plant for Megapack, its energy storage product, people familiar with the matter said. The two are also in talks over how CATL can increase its supplies as the Megapack business grows.

Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

No near-term impact is expected for Tesla, but Seth Goldstein, a Morningstar analyst, said “being potentially excluded from military contracts may give everyone considering a partnership with CATL a pause.”

Last February, under pressure from lawmakers, U.S. utility company Duke Energy said it would decommission energy-storage batteries produced by CATL at one of the nation’s largest Marine Corps bases and will phase out CATL products at its civilian projects.

Goldstein added he expects Tesla to continue its partnerships with CATL because of the importance of the company’s relationships with the Chinese government. Upending those ties “could potentially be worse than any political ramifications in the U.S.,” he said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation’s capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returns to Washington for three days of state funeral rites starting on Tuesday.

Carter’s remains, which have been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, will leave the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 will depart Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a motorcade into Washington and the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects at an afternoon service.

WATCH: Jimmy Carter funeral events – 39th president will be transported to Washington

Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, will then lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday. He then receives a state funeral Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.

There will be the familiar rituals that follow a president’s death — the Air Force ride back to the Beltway, a military honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps, the Lincoln catafalque in the Rotunda. There also will be symbolism unique to Carter: His hearse will stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his remains will be transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location nods to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.

All of the pomp will carry some irony for the Democrat who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Baptist and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.

“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up.”

From 1977 to 1981, Carter was the city’s highest-ranking resident. But he never mastered it.

“He could be prickly and a not very appealing personality” in a town that thrives on relationships, Alter said, describing a president who struggled with schmoozing lawmakers and reporters.

The gatekeepers of Washington society never embraced Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, either, not quite knowing what to make of the small-town Southerners who carried their own luggage and bought their clothes off the rack. Carter sold what had been the presidential yacht, a perk his predecessors had used to wine and dine Capitol power players.

Early in Carter’s presidency, Washington Post society columnist Sally Quinn tagged the Carters and their West Wing as “an alien tribe,” incapable of “playing ‘the game.’” An elite Georgetown hostess herself, Quinn nodded to Washington’s “frivolity” but nonetheless mocked “the Carter people” as “not, in fact, comfortable in limousines, yachts, or in elegant salons, in black tie” or with “place cards, servants, six courses, different forks, three wines … and after-dinner mingling.”

He endured a rocky four years that left him without enough friends in the town’s power circles and, ultimately, across an electorate that delivered nearly 500 Electoral College votes to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

Long after leaving office, Carter still bemoaned a political cartoon published around his inauguration that depicted his family approaching the White House with his mother, “Miss Lillian,” chewing on a hayseed.

Carter often flouted the ceremonial trappings that have been on display in Georgia and will continue in Washington.

As president, he wanted to keep the Marine Band from playing “Hail to the Chief,” thinking it elevated the president too much. His advisers convinced him to accept it as part of the job. And the song played Saturday as he arrived at his presidential center after a motorcade through his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood farm.

He also never used his full name, James Earl Carter Jr., even taking the oath of office. His full name was printed on memorial cards given to all mourners who paid their respects in Atlanta.

He once addressed the nation from the White House residence wearing a cardigan, now on display at his museum and library. His remains now rest in a wooden casket being carried and guarded by military pallbearers in their impeccable dress uniforms.

“He was a simple man in so many ways,” said Brad Webb, an Army veteran who was one of more than 23,000 people who came to honor the former president at his library, which is on the same campus as The Carter Center, where the former president and first lady based their decades of advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights in the developing world.

“He was also a complicated man, who took his defeat and did so much good in the world,” said Webb, who voted for Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 and Reagan in 1980. “And, looking back, some of the things in his presidency — the inflation, the Iran hostages, the energy crisis — were really things that no president can actually control. We get to look back with some perspective and understand that he was an excellent former president but also had a presidency we can appreciate more than we did as it was happening.”

Alabama replenished its depth at the running back position Monday night by adding Louisiana transfer Dre’lyn Washington. The rising redshirt senior will have one year of eligibility remaining for the Crimson Tide.

Washington started two games over 11 appearances for Louisiana last season. The 5-foot-9, 218-pound back carried the ball 73 times for 478 yards (6.55 yards per carry) with five touchdowns. He also recorded six receptions for 107 yards and a score through the air.

Alabama decided to dip into the portal for a running back after seeing Justice Haynes make way for Michigan earlier this month. The Tide returns starter Jam Miller as well as Richard Young, Daniel Hill and Kevin Riley. Along with Washington, Alabama added Rivals100 freshman Akylin Dear as part of its 2025 class.

Washington signed with Louisiana as an unranked recruit in the 2021 class. The Hemphill, Texas native has rushed for 1,343 rushing yards and nine touchdowns and recorded 14 receptions for 154 yards and a pair of scores through the air during his college career.