Casey Handmer

It's maybe five years behind.

We're already on track to do that.

My views on this are somewhat different from the mainstream, which is great because this is a podcast.

So the mainstream view would say, well, China has cheaper labor.

which is no longer true because they compared to Mexico.

And it's got lower environmental regulations, which is true.

And that it is more business friendly, which is absolutely crazy.

I've never heard, like, there's no way you could justify that, like, your company having to have an inspector from the CCP on its board who, like, harasses you about Xi Jinping every day, like, helps you do your business.

And also the rule of law is not great.

So you're constantly having to pay bribes to people in order to stay in business.

The idea that the United States cannot compete against that with mostly or fully automated solar panel manufacturing in the United States, which has cheaper natural gas by far, abundant oil, abundant human resources, great financial capacity, world-leading automation, et cetera, et cetera, is crazy.

We could literally copy-paste solar manufacturing factories.

This is a good question.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I thought, ah, finally, the Europeans will see sense.

And they'll like pull the trigger on like, we need to localize production of solar panels from dirt to the finished module, which is like roughly a four-stage process.

They didn't.

So they're still paying Russia like a billion dollars a day for the privilege of being invaded.

But at the time, I thought they could probably do that in about two years.

And I think the

If you started today, like it's currently 11 o'clock.