In the IRA, there are concerns we can’t meet the ambitious domestic sourcing requirements for EVs and critical minerals. There’s talk of counting Canada as domestic. Did we go too far there? I get very interested in seeing, "Gee, you reached too far,’ or ‘You tried to do this too fast," and, "Can we really do it?" In other words, you’re being cursed for being ambitious. People said, "Oh, well, you can’t do manufacturing again," and we said, "Yes, we can." Other administrations said, "We want to do manufacturing but I’m not showing up, I’m not putting up any money, I’m not putting in any structure." Clearly we know that when you try to do something like this and you stress the system, you’re going to find holes. Critical minerals is one of them. Let’s talk about lithium. We’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out, whether it’s in the Salton Sea or other lands, how to get to it, how fast we can get to it. So now there’s a chicken-and-egg problem going on. Can we really stand on our two feet 100 percent of the time right now? And the answer is probably not 100 percent. But we’ve got a great running start. And in a reasonably short period of time, as these market signals go out, the private sector starts to come in, and we start to mine lithium and we start to process it. We will be able to produce for the most part what we need in the United States of America. And when we can’t, if we can’t, of course we’ll talk to our allies. You shouldn’t not start because you don’t have the whole thing done. How are you working to address concerns from western states that the requirements for EV charging stations to be within a certain proximity from each other are unrealistic? We feel pretty good that we’ve done the best that we can given the parameters that we have. We fully expect, whether it’s grants for building roads or EV charging stations or the grid, that we’re going to get feedback from the governors about what works and what doesn’t work. And those respective offices are going to have to work with that and through that on those particular issues. What plans does the administration have for ensuring that the charging assets the taxpayers are investing in aren’t then becoming abandoned or underutilized after the money is spent from the bill? Whether it’s the EV charging stations or high speed internet or the grid, we don’t just give this money out without paying attention to it. We’re asking each of the governors to give us a fairly detailed plan about what they expect to do with it, where they expect to put them, how they expect to maintain them, and how they expect to pay for this in the future. When they do that, then we will give them the funding that has been promised in the bill.
| 
