The electric vehicle transition is really a story about China. There, subsidies have helped juice not just automakers, but the entire battery supply chain behind them. Those incentives, plus decades of industrial policy focused on controlled critical mineral supply chains, has left American and European automakers flat footed.
Take graphite, for example. Every lithium-ion battery today, regardless of the chemistry, requires some or all of the anode to be made of graphite, and Chinese companies make 99% of all graphite anode materials, according to…
