Numlock Sunday: Alexander Kaufman on the bureaucracy of the apocalypse

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Alex Kaufman who wrote “U.S. Trade Authorities Deal Blow To Biden’s Electric Vehicle Plans” for HuffPost. Here's what I wrote about it:

This week the U.S. International Trade Commission threw a wrench into the electrification goals of several U.S. car companies when it weighed in on a dispute between two South Korean battery manufacturers. LG Chem alleges SK Innovation hired away talent and stole trade secrets, and then attempted to cover it up. The ITC agreed with them, so SK Innovation is now forbidden from importing materials for facilities it’s trying to build in Georgia that would produce batteries for electric vehicles for the next 10 years. The $2.6 billion investment would have produced batteries for Volkswagen and Ford, which was planning to use the facility to produce batteries for their forthcoming electric F-150. That in particular is a problem, because the Biden administration wants to acquire elect…