Market cap of Tesla is much bigger than other American car companies, right? I think that ought to imply that the US is invested in EVs. And compare to the situation in Germany where desires to prop up incumbent automakers lead to some crazy policies, which suggests the US isn’t as wedded to incumbents as it could be. Similarly there were USG efforts to incentivise EVs with subsidies.

I’m not totally sure about the above and even less sure about solar, but it feels like it is pretty wrong to say that the whole US didn’t want either to happen. I think on average and more so in certain federated parts, the US did want to make EVs and solar happen more than they did.

Even if your arguments are true, I think we should treat ‘I failed because I wanted to fail’ as a failure of US industrial capacity, not as a success.