Sen. Joe Manchin: The U.S. needs supply chain it can rely on with 'our allies not our adversaries'

We’re very pleased to be joined once again by Senator Joe Manchin of Wild Wonderful West Virginia, one of my favorite state senator. Good to have you back. Good to be with you. Good to chat with you. All right. So we got, we got to start with energy, OK. We got inflation reduction act, hundreds of billions, private capital. A lot of people here, by the way, are the ones putting in that private capital. But you will argue that some of the rules that we’re trying to do or doing on the back end are actually counterproductive to our energy goals. Intention of the IRA was supposed to be energy security. That was it. We did it because of the Ukraine war. We didn’t have the energy to help our allies in Europe when Russian energy was cut off. We wanted to make sure we could help. And doing that bill is an all in energy. We’re producing more energy today off of the IRA and $100 billion of of also the bipartisan infrastructure bill than me and my committee did. So with that, it’s produced what we wanted to produce 38 trillion cubic feet of gas last year, 4.7 billion barrels of oil, 14 billion cubic feet a day of LNG and more solar and more battery than ever before. All in energy policy and just follow it. Basically they’re trying to accelerate what the administration wants to accelerate more EV cars. The only reason we did any type of credits for E VS Brian was because we wanted that manufacturing base by. We didn’t want to be relied on China, Russia, North Korea or Iran. And they, you know, China over the years has really captivated the markets and they have most of the products it takes to build a battery. And I said fine, but I don’t think that basically when we invented and Henry Ford did the, the, the mass production of the of the car, I don’t remember the federal government sending checks to people, enticing people to buy the market basically engulfed it. OK. The product usually takes care. They’re trying to accelerate that while they’re putting the Kuwaitis on hydrogen, which is going to be the cleaner fuel of the future. So in some ways Senator, are we encouraging because the president listen, I was in Detroit, I spent the whole day with the the UAW. He was in town, he made a brief visit, but he made a visit. He needs their vote. He wants their vote are but are we encouraging Chinese dominance still in this market? Should any of our policies that were enacted, anything coming from China or the four countries I mentioned, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea should absolutely be prohibited as of coming to 2025. This was the last time and only 50% should be now. They’ve extended it for another two years and beyond because they know that we’re not getting the permits we need to extract the minerals here in America or from our our critical suppliers. We need, we need basically supply chains that are we can count on. They’re free trade agreement countries, people, our allies, not our adversaries. Listen, the we’re going to need 25 to 50% more electricity generation to meet our AI and data center goals at the minimum in probably 7 to 10 years. We’re building out solar, we’re building out wind, we’re building out battery storage. That’s great. But these new EPA rules that are at least in place are being discussed would require 90% of the nasty emissions from coal to be captured. I’m sure the coal industry will say we can’t do that or to be prohibitively expensive. Are you worried that we’re going to lose power generation at a time that we need more power generation? Well, not only am I worried about it, the FERC, Veterans Regulatory Committee and Newark, the people who basically evaluate our grid are telling us we’re in a danger zone right now and we’re controlling more demand into basically and taking off more dispatchable 24/7 power. So there’s a, there’s a transition coming, but you can’t take something off that you’re depending on 24/7 unless you have something better to replace it with. That’s all. They’re not there yet, but they’re they’re they’re more aggressively taking stuff off than we are putting stuff. That’s exactly what the regulators have told me. They said slow it down, Joe, make sure that we’re not eliminating or early retiring products. Coal can do its job. If you get a carbon capture sequestration, hydrogen or blue or natural gas can do its job. But when you can’t get a class six, well permit Brian, that’s I mean you’re telling me one hand do it, encourage me to do it and then not let me do it.