First, he was asked by Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking member on the committee about the use of slave labor in China to make and sell solar panels used by much of the rest of the world, including, unfortunately, the United States. Mr. McCaul, who leads the China Task Force in the House, simply asked: “How can you assure us, this quest that we’re on [clean energy] that slave labor coming out of China where genocide is taking place as we speak, is never a part of the climate solution in the United States?”
Mr. Kerry, an experienced diplomat and denizen of Washington for his entire adult life, didn’t flinch at all. He said: “It (slavery) is a problem. Xinjiang province not only produces some of the solar panels that we believe are being, in some cases produced in forced labor by Uyghurs. Nothing can be traded and I’ve made that very clear. President Biden has made it very clear. Climate is existential for everybody on the planet.”