Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: As a supply chain manager, I think we've all been there where your boss comes up to your desk and they're like, I know you've seen the headlines. Tell me what's our exposure to products from Ukraine? And you start to go into panic mode. You get the cold sweats in your hands. You're just like, okay, the first thing I'm going to do is look in our database and see how many of our suppliers are producing products in the Ukraine. And so when you do that initial search, like companies with country of origin in the Ukraine in our supply chain, it might come up zero. And you're like, all right, I think we're okay. But when you get three or four weeks into this, you start to realize, oh, crap, like, there's actually now fuel shortage in Eastern Europe because, you know, Ukraine was supplying fuel to these countries and now they only have partial electricity for part of the day. And that's how it impacts you.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I want to welcome you back to this week's episode of Movers and Makers Podcast, brought to you by Diagon. We're going to jump into more recent and current topics in this week's episode. So this episode will come out on the day of the inauguration. So we're going to talk a lot about what we think the new Trump administration means and how it could shape especially the industrial and manufacturing space. And we're going to even dive a little deeper on how it might affect the battery manufacturing business in the US as well. From there, we're going to talk a little bit more about the specific topic of recent announcements on China, actually, not just putting tariffs in place, but starting to put really restrictive export bans in place for materials specific to the battery business. So welcome back, Will. I'm excited to get into things. How you doing?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Doing really good. I'm excited about this month ahead. It's like, it's going to be crazy. And it's week one and we're already on this roller coaster of a year. It seems like there's just a lot happening. So, yeah, we've got to be responsive.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the only guaranteed thing that it won't be boring and it probably won't be predictable, that we'll make probably some projections and the world's going to change probably a lot in the coming, you know, year or two, but it will be dynamic, no doubt. So why don't we just start, like, what are you expecting, you know, from the first, you know, 60, 90 days from the Trump administration? You're starting to see his appointments come in for his cabinet as well as a lot of like key kind of leadership positions. I'm curious what you, what are some of your initial reactions or what you think are going to happen?
[00:02:22] Speaker A: This is not going to be like a quiet start for the first 90 days on the job. For one, Trump's been in office before, so I think he kind of knows already what he wants to do and which kind of things he wants to start with. So I mean, I think first we're going to see kind of a shifting of the guards in terms of like positioning and jockeying for power with other countries. We've already seen some pretty brash announcements about know, desire and interest to take on Canada as the 51st state. So I don't, I don't think that was the way you thought you were going to become a US Citizen. But that's one of those, one, one of those, those types of announcements, you know, interest in Greenland. And you know, I think that we kind of like poke fun at some of those things, but I think that we're going to see lots of announcements like that. And I think that in the grand scheme of things with countries that are currently rivals and allies, you know, might shift into, you know, being cooler on the relationship front and other countries that are kind of like maybe enemy number one countries like Russia, we could even see like softening of some of the positions and sanctions that we've got there. So I think that there are going to be lots of announcements on trade policy and the policies that we have just in place with positioning with those, with countries like Russia, China, the EU, with some of the trade agreements that we've got with Mexico and Canada. I think that all of those things are up for, up for grabs and up for renegotiation.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think I just spent a few weeks over the holidays in Canada where I'm from, for broader context. But you can see it already that like his impact on the political scene there. Justin Trudeau just stepped down as a leader, as the Prime Minister, like effectively when they find a new leader that he'll step down and a much stronger, the opposition leader of the Progressive Party or the, the PCs or the, sorry, the Conservative Party seems to be building momentum which is like a much more, we'll say stronger business position, a much more like a right leaning party, business friendly. And so I think a lot of that is probably in response to some of the Trump threats already. But you see it shifting. You know, he was prime minister for almost a decade and having a material change on at least what the Canadian people are, how they want to be positioned in the next four years.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be interesting for sure. You know, one of the things that I, I'm kind of curious to see how things are going to shake out is that Canada has been a really big producer of lithium and raw materials that are used in the, the battery manufacturing world. Specifically Montreal is the location of know lots of these companies like Albemarle and others that supply into the battery industry. I think it'll be really interesting to see how the US is positioning with Canada and subsequently their response is going to affect that battery supply chain because there are lots of US companies that rely on that trade agreement for supply of materials.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I think actually Canada's super well positioned in general to be, you know, it's got a small, relatively small population and huge access to natural resources. And it was interesting. I was thinking back, I think Canada, Mexico, like the NAFTA agreement was the first thing that he tackled I think in 2016. And he didn't get into the China battles I think until 1718. And I wonder if he's doing something similar here where he's kind of going after the neighbors first where like the stakes are a little bit lower in some ways and then we'll, we'll ramp up things with China's as he kind of gets his feet under him. But yeah, I think Canada in general has such a high dependency on the U.S. there's some crazy trade dependency on, on there. But I'm super optimistic that there's a lot of mutual benefit there and will like continue to be. I think maybe like it may be pivoting a little bit. I do think there's a big threat to Mexico, maybe more so because we talk about it. Some people call it the, the loophole that you know, nearshoring was what a lot of especially Chinese companies that were under big tariff regimes kind of moved to Mex. And we're either doing full manufacturing or maybe just doing small amounts of it to like transform their products to bypass the tariffs that are already in place. And I think you'll see him. You know, I actually was just watching a video clip of him talking about that that he's going to either close that loophole or make it much more restrictive to force those companies to either not do it or to build factories inside the US itself.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been seeing that too. You know, just on this topic, I spent the summer in Mexico City last year. I would say up until then I didn't really have an appreciation for how widely adopted BYD and other kind of Chinese EVs were outside of the US but I would say that was probably BYD was the number one vehicle that we saw and the vehicle of choice for Uber drivers and, you know, just kind of everyday people that wanted an ev and, you know, the quality level was actually really good. So I can see why they're, you know, that's a threat to American EV manufacturers. And so, yeah, the strategy, like you mentioned up until recently has been, you know, okay, if you're a Chinese company that wants to import products to the US that you could manufacture in Mexico and then ship those goods to the U.S. i think that this administration specifically, I'd say even the Biden administration has kind of caught onto that. And now it seems to be that they're pushing these companies to. Pushing the, the regulations to either ban those products from being shipped from Mexico to the US because of the origin of the company, or more interestingly, to push these companies to just put those investment dollars directly in the US And I think that with this administration, it seems like they're certainly for hire. I think this was Elon that tweeted this, that any company that's going to invest more than a billion dollars in the US that they would greenlight pretty much fast track any regulatory red tape that they need to cross. And that's like, in pretty stark contrast to like a principled, hey, we're only going to accept investment dollars from this country, companies from this country or that country to just like, hey, listen, if you guys have enough money and you're going to do enough for us, like, you're welcome, come on and set up shop here.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's incredible. And that was like the second piece that leads into what deregulation looks like, whether it's this informal style Twitter deregulation, which I'm not sure how it actually manifests, but I do, I think with Elon's influence on the federal government and broader policy, things that you see, I think him like, for instance, like the FAA is often, at least he talks about restricted their ability to launch rockets for all kinds of, like, local environmental or other regulatory issues. And I think you will see him, especially with, you know, he's a big proponent of American manufacturing and how difficult it has been in certain circumstances to build factories. And I think Trump is aligned with trying to do that. And I think Elon will probably, you know, make a big push to deregulate in some fashion and allow people to build factories faster.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I'm happy to share my take on this, but just knowing that we both used to work for Elon, you know, what would you say? I mean, this is probably not the first time you've, you've seen this type of philosophy. I mean Elon is a very direct to the chase whoever's the person responsible. I'm curious to get your take on Department of Government Efficiency.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think you see it happening already. I mean, you see it. He's trying to influence without authority in some ways because I think he doesn't have, they're obviously not in office yet. He doesn't have direct responsibility. But using an incredible platform and you know, through X to to we'll say create some transparency, you know, in the recent bill, I think to extend the budget through the end of the year, it seems like at least on the surface that he was able to influence it meaningfully. You know, the original bill was like kind of like a foot and a half tall and to basically public pressure and with him and Vivek were able to reduce the amount of the size of that bill and kind of the additional things were rolled into it. I think his style when he, you know, when he runs his companies, it's not a, it's not a democracy, you know, it's a dictatorship in a very real way. And the amount he has full control over those companies and you know, he talked about it with Twitter and I experienced it through multiple rounds of layoffs at Tesla that he used to say something like, if you don't have to hire back, it means you didn't cut like deep enough. And he often tries to cut more than you need to because it's the only way to find out what the true minimum is. If you just cut the minimum, you're probably leaving some fat as you're kind of going through these growth stages. And I think it works. It's very stressful to work through that. You know, as an individual is like, you know, me managing a team of 20 people. You have to cut portions of that. There's still, he still has very ambitious goals and you still have to, you know, do your day to day job until like he feels comfortable that you can kind of rehire and grow a team again. I don't know how that approach will work in the government. You know, I'm skeptical that he'll be able to cut as aggressively just based on, you know, the things we already talked about. I do think his platform could be really powerful, that there's a Lot of spending in the government that happens that people are just not fully aware of. And I wonder if just shining a light on it could actually be the most powerful thing for him and kind of bringing, you know, wasteful spending to the surface.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I would co sign everything you said. I mean, that's been my experience working with Elon as well. I've been through that process of having to call my team and you know, reduce headcount and sometimes at really inopportune times, like we're trying to ramp up a program and I've got to now cut my team by a third. That was very anxiety and stress inducing. But I do think that bringing some of that philosophy to the government, government bureaucracy will bring some level of efficiency. I think that there is going to be, you know, certainly some hubris. There are going to be lots of things that maybe just seem like we don't understand why this process is here. But you know, for public safety and for defense reasons and for various other reasons, I think it's not going to be, you know, a government run like a business anytime in, in our lifetime. But I think that there's definitely a lot of room for it to be more efficient than it is today.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: There's lots of reasons to, to not like Elon, basically. You know, he's a pretty polarizing character. But I mean, for someone to be able to execute the scale and complexity of businesses that he does, it's. I think he, he'll be able to get his arms around it. I think the ability and level of control have, I also think may be discouraging for him that he goes in and does a few things but, you know, realizes that he doesn't have the authority that he does in the other parts of his business and he kind of gets other bored or just decides to focus on other things as well or him and Trump have a fiery breakup, I think is also a possible outcome.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: We shall see. I mean, I think. Yeah, yeah, him getting bored is actually probably the more likely outcome that I've been imagining is that, you know, this, the interests go as far as like, hey, can this help me with SpaceX X and Tesla and some of my business pursuits, you know, outside of that, I think it just becomes like a lot of work that you, that he's got to manage with diminishing returns.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: I think you're right because the way I, you see him talk about this in public is he always just works on the current limiter for his respective companies. So whatever's holding him back from getting to the next step and whatever pursuit he's working on. And I think at some point he saw at least the Biden administration or some political obstacles and like that's the current problem. And whatever obstacles he sees for self driving or getting a starship to, to scale, like I think once he sees a clear path that like, okay, there's no major impediments, he'll go work on the technical solutions he needs to solve those things. I don't know Phil. I don't know if he's truly worried about the deficit of the US or other things. I think he's probably worried about his own self interest in a lot of ways.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: Yeah, there's I think an interesting segue to one of the topics you mentioned was import duties and export bans. And I can talk about those really just being two sides of the same coin. Some little known facts that people might just not know about Tesla and battery production that they do. So a lot of people in our audience I think are familiar with different types of battery chemistries. But for people who aren't, there are two competing platforms today. I would say like the largest competing battery types are nickel based batteries that power Most of the EVs that we're familiar with here in the U.S. you know, Tesla, Rivian Lucid. Most of the EVs that you may have been in or, or had an experience with are based on nickel based batteries. That acronym would be nmc which is nickel, manganese, cobalt and you know, with nickel being kind of a high priced element and cobalt also being a rare earth mineral that also has lots of supply chain like human capital issues being mined in the Congo with lots of deaths, quite, to be quite honest, associated with it. Most companies are looking to clean up their supply chain and find an alternate platform for that. Well, China has actually become the number one producer of the alternative battery chemistry which will be iron based batteries. And with the iron based chemistry you have iron, which is a much more readily available element in the earth's crust. And it's also based on phosphate. So lithium, iron phosphate, LFP is the, the competing cathode chemistry and China is the number one producer of that. And so if you've been to China or been in any of their vehicles in a BYD or Cherry or any of their other EVs, it's most likely powered by those LFP batteries. They're cheaper, they're not as energy dense or as like they don't have as much power draw as some of the nickel based batteries. So their nickel is better for the performance aspect, but they're also safer. So like, if you were to pierce one of those LFP batteries, it would diffuse at a much lower temperature than the nickel based batteries. So like, why am I explaining all this? So Tesla actually has and has had for years the largest source of one of the largest sources of LFP batteries in the world. Most of the vehicles that they produce in China are produced using this iron based battery and that enables them to have a much lower cost basis on, on those vehicles. And China's been. Sorry, Tesla's been building that capability in the US for years, but it's been captive really for Tesla's vehicles and their vehicles only. And so what you have is that most US based companies are now looking for opportunities to make more LFP cathode and LFP batteries. We've placed tariffs on battery cells coming out of China for that reason, to kind of create this barrier as an opportunity for US companies to do it. But now I think we're going to see some really interesting things over the next few years that may enhance or inhibit the US's ability to actually make that, that new technology or that, that new platform domestically.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really interesting. I actually was just looking at some articles before we got started and it said that, that 99% of the LFP cathode active material is produced in China. So it's like me, which is pretty incredible. And then I think the context of this discussion, you know, this week China had announced these export bans where I think it's gallium, germanium and antimony as well as like not just any of those. Greg, this is, no, as you know, I'm a terrible speller, but I think it's interesting to they're banning or at least controlling them what they're saying for military and civilian use and then even some of the equipment and like technologies used to process them. And all of this is in response to the US limiting their export of materials required for like semiconductor production. And so Trump is not in office. This is not even in retaliation to something he's done. But you know, you can see them targeting the us, kind of domesticating their battery supply chains and how vulnerable that may be based on the current sources of those materials.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's going to be a fascinating just spectacle seeing the way the trade war kind of unravels. Yeah, I think the way to think about this is when the US imposes these types of tariffs and likewise China has imposed its own set of export regulations on different elements and components. You can Be pretty sure that there will be retaliatory measures that the other country puts in place. You know, really interesting example of this, the export controls that China is considering putting in place on battery equipment. Because that's something that we haven't seen before. Up until now, most of the tariffs that we've seen have been on the finished goods like battery cells and PV cells for solar. Solar cells. So things like that. But it hasn't really been on the equipment because at the end of the day, if we want to have independent sources of these things and to make, have domestic sources of production for it, we're going to need equipment for those things. And it turns out that now China is the number one producer of a lot of the battery equipment that these companies now need. And so yeah, the interesting thing that I think we should all be bracing for is whether China is going to impose import bans on some of the picks and shovels that these companies need, equipment, infrastructure and other things that will hinder or hamper US interest in creating some kind of independence from foreign sources.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: I wrote something like that in preparation for this, that export bans are even more serious than, you know, than tariffs I think because especially if they have like a really high percentage of that material or equipment. Because one is it could just shut you down as a company. Like you could just like not be able to produce the thing you want or it could have this like exponential impact on price where if it's like a hundred percent tariff, it's sort of predictable it will double the price of the thing. But if there's no other sources or one other source that's like extremely, will get extremely expensive as like demand aggregates. It can have huge knock on effects.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And it also, it kind of becomes a game of whack a mole after a while because you know, here's kind of the way these things ripple effect through the supply chain. Right. Let's say there like now there are import duties of 100% on electric vehicles and 25% on lithium ion EV batteries. At that percentage it might still be competitive for a US company to still buy that product, pay the tariff and still come out ahead in, you know, in their, their cost of goods sold. But you know, in the event that there's a ban on it now that means that it's just not up for sale anyway. And so what you would then see happening, as I think we're starting to see today, is the sources of these things shifting from one country to another and maybe countries that are kind of Underdogs today, you know, like South Korea, Japan. Japan actually was the originator of a lot of this battery technology and they saw kind of a diplomatic when China started to go online building these massive mega factories of this stuff. But I think that there's a really good chance that some of those tides shift from importing from China to importing from other countries. And depending on our goals that might be on the US's goals, that might be a good thing. But it could also mean that maybe we're not solving the problem long term. It could just be shifting it from one country to another. So I don't envy the person's job it is to like put these types of trade policies in place because I think it is an enormous game of whack a mole and you can never quite get it right.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I was, you know, I was a global supply manager at the time or managing a team of, of buyers at the time that were sourcing stuff from all over the world. And what I experienced, especially when the tariff started happening was you realize that individual companies, it's like as a procurement person, you have to do what's in the economic best interest of the company for the most part. You know, there's, there's certainly long term supply risks that you need to account for. But you know, these incentives matter and they can have huge economic impacts on the profitability of the end product or you know, the cost it takes to the capital expenditure to build the factories. And you know, you realize it just those incentives matter and it will drive a bunch of decisions that can be very long lasting or they can have whipsaw effects too if you change all your sourcing to a new region and then the tariffs disappear or something like that. So you have to make the decisions very thoughtfully. But, but they do matter. And the corporations, at least the way they're set up is that you kind of just have to look out for the economic best interest of the company and manage long term supply risks at the same time.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: I can relate to that experience. I mean, I remember being, I would say I remember this happening when I was at Tesla, but it's probably more fresh in my memory from my time at Astra when the war in Ukraine broke out and there was just as a supply chain manager, I think we've all been there where your boss comes up to your desk and they're like, I know you've seen the headlines, tell me what's our exposure to, you know, products from Ukraine? And you start to go into panic mode, you get the cold sweats in your hands, and you're just like, okay, the first thing I'm going to do is look in our database and see how many of our suppliers are producing products in the Ukraine. And it's. It's like just from the start, really hard to get that kind of visibility because, you know, the company that you're buying from usually has a different address or they might have, like, a local distributor that you're buying from in the US and so when you do that initial search, like companies with country of origin in the Ukraine in our supply chain, it might come up zero. And you're like, all right, I think we're okay. But when you get three or four weeks into this, you start to realize, oh, crap, like, there's actually now fuel shortage in Eastern Europe because, you know, Ukraine was supplying fuel to these countries and now they only have partial electricity for part of the day. And that's how it impacts you. And I can't remember which exact element it was. It was xenon or krypton. The Ukraine was one of the biggest exporters of that, and that was one of the fuels that we used in our satellite thrusters. And then that became a huge debate, like, do we change the architect architecture of our thrusters so that we can accommodate a different gas that doesn't rely on it coming from, you know, from the Ukraine. So if you're a supply chain manager, these next few years are going to be a very interesting time. You probably got some job security because people are going to be looking to you quite often to problem solve and shift geographies of where you source things from. But, yeah, this is like part of the, part of the challenge with building any kind of deep tech or hardware product is that you're going to be beholden to global geopolitics whether you like it or not.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I think Covid, really, through these years of outsourcing manufacturing, it kind of slowly happened. But then all of a sudden, maybe Covid just exposed a lot of things that we knew those sources had been slowly outsourced. But then it's hard to reverse, too. Those things are very hard to undo once the supply chains are established. And you're starting to see that kind of shift back as well.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, like, maybe just one last thing on this topic. And, you know, it's related to Diagon. We've got suppliers, you know, sellers that have equipment in lots of different places. Actually, you know, one of the largest sources today is from China because there's been such an overcapacity of battery manufacturing equipment that's gone onto the market for companies like Catl that, you know, now there's surplus and these equipment makers are looking for alternate places to sell, to sell this surplus equipment. And right now if you're building, I mean it's a, it is a great time to be a buyer in this market. You can get machines for, you know, pennies or quarters on the dollar. I don't know how long that window's going to be open, but for now that's one of the things that we've been seeing with partners that we do that we have in China. They are certainly willing and interested in, you know, selling into the western market, the U.S. europe and elsewhere. So yeah, we'll see how long that window remains open. I for one, hope that we pose as few restrictions as possible on the tools because that's really going to be the thing that helps us create more supply locally in the U.S. yeah, we've.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Talked, I think in past about the volatility in the battery business and manufacturing maybe in general, but battery specifically, even though you saw is it. I saw the other day that the U.S. set a record for EVs in 24. And I think when you hear broadly that, I think it's a flattening of the growth curve. It probably spiked during like the COVID years of 20 through 23. And then maybe there's a softening of demand for a period of time. But the overall trend to electrification of the grid and transportation seems to be maintaining. But certainly there's like a flattening of demand and maybe an over investment for a period of time in these factories. But the other example we use is, you know, when Tesla bought the NUMI plant in Fremont, it was. This is probably a difference maker for them early on to get. I think it's the second biggest factory in the US for you know, $10 million or something like that, $40 million.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: In Tesla equity at the time, which turned out to be a great deal for Toyota, but also a great deal for Tesla because I was in the unique position of going out and sourcing some of that equipment that we got for pennies on the dollar in the initial acquisition. Some of these machines are like the size of an apartment building. They're not going to tear it out. They're just like this comes with the building. But some of those machines alone cost like $40 million. The stamping presses that you and I used to procure. So yeah, those types of deals are the types of things that you can get your hands on when there is surplus supply. It's just hard to know how long that's going to be around.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: But there is an opportunity there. You know, I think aggressive companies, I think there are some cautionary tales like the North Poles where they maybe scale too quickly, but there's a lot of other, you know, battery and manufacturing companies looking to scale their businesses. And I think there is huge opportunity for probably facilities like the NUMMI example or you know, these equipment opportunities that people have over invested and are looking to offload equipment that know they decided not to use or maybe had over capacitized in other regions. Yeah, I'm excited. I think it's, it's, it's going to be an interesting couple months, but a dynamic couple of years maybe before we do that. You know, there's been a lot of talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. We didn't really talk about how we think that could be affected here. You know, a lot of the title is a bit of a misnomer on where a lot of the money is actually going. But you see, you know, I think over $3 billion just last year was awarded to 25 projects across, I think 14 states for DOE grants that are kind of under the Inflation Reduction Act.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think within the Inflation Reduction act, they're categorized under the bipartisan infrastructure law. Yeah. So companies like, was it Redwood Materials, Mitrachem Forge, Battery Forge Nano were all recipients of that form. Energy, I think was another one.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And it seems, at least from the folks that we've talked to, the risk of those grants going away seems relatively low for a couple of reasons. One is that I think it's approved by Congress, so it would have to have congressional approval to like somehow withdraw or take those grants away. And then it's interesting, I don't have the table in front of me, but I've seen it where a disproportionate amount of that funding is actually in kind of red states as well. And so there's probably a lot of benefits of having that, you know, effectively money to build factories to continue to flow to those, those states as well.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Like don't take money away from your constituents is like number one rule of politics.
[00:30:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the things that are at risk, though. You've heard President Trump talk a lot about the EV tax credit. So that's the consumer tax credit of $7,500 for consumers. And then there is quite a few, but there are several of these. It's called the Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax credits. And it seems like, like those matter to the economics of, of making battery cells. And so what it'll be really interesting to see if those are stay in place. And for context, there's, I think it's $35 per kilowatt hour for cells and $10 for, for modules. And so is those incentives likely drive the economics of a lot of those factories? And it feels like depending on how he handles it, that could obviously have a big impact as well.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we'll see how things go with the Department of Energy, I think, has been a very big proponent of making direct investments and using government funding for the construction of new batteries, solar, renewable energy projects. I think that there's a chance that we could see maybe some of those things continuing. Maybe there's just. It's spreading out over lots of different energy parts of the energy sector. You know, maybe it's oil, natural gas. There could be, you know, some other areas that I think are, are getting some investment. But yeah, I don't know. I, I think that it's much more likely to come in the form of tax credits and tax breaks as one of. Part of the strategy that I think like Republican administrations typically like to lean on. Yeah, we'll see. It's going to be. It's hard to predict, but that's. At least that's my hypothesis.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: All right, well, I think we covered the main topics, so appreciate for everyone for listening this this week and we're going to continue to release episodes every second week and really look forward to your feedback on episodes as we go. So thanks, Will, and look forward to also bringing some guests on to share their perspective on the manufacturing and battery business going forward.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. We've got some incredible guests in store. Looking forward to it. All right, thanks.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: All right, see you. Cheers. All.
