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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

Trump didn't create this dispute--it has been ongoing for years, and Obama imposed tariffs on solar imports from China too.

China subsidizes solar and nearly all US manufacturers have been forced to move plants to compete, declare bankruptcy or shutdown.

The question is: after China obtains a stronghold in this market... then what? The Chinese subsides will eventually be removed, and solar panels will return to their natural price--but with all of the supply chain, supplies for materials, r&d, knowhow, etc centralized in and around China.. making it hard for non-Chinese companies to compete.

So look further out--when China no longer subsidizes solar... is that good for the US economy?

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Yes, if China had subsidized the US installation of massive new electrical power generation capacity independent of fossil fuels that would last decades, that would have been good for the US economy. It isn't that simple to raise prices on durable productive goods — your customers have to compete against the people who bought the same goods last year at a lower price.

As for the "natural price", the only significant irreducible cost to producing silicon photovoltaic panels is the price of energy itself. Everything else is either literally dirt cheap (silica, alumina, trace quantities of phosphorus) or can be amortized over arbitrarily large production volumes (giant molybdenum crucibles, FIB lithography machines, Ph.D. physicists). In the limit where solar panels are abundant, the "natural price" for solar panels is very nearly the price of the sand they are made from.

Allowing China this type of business hegemony is a strategic mistake.

That's what Perón said here about US air conditioners. Now it's 70 years later and look how far we've come at not tolerating US business hegemony in air conditioner manufacturing! Nearly all air conditioners sold in Argentina are Argentine. Very nearly no Argentine air conditioners are sold anywhere else in the world, even in neighboring countries. BECAUSE THEY SUCK.

> China subsidizes solar and nearly all US manufacturers have been forced to move plants to compete

Incidentally, the "US manufacturers" supporting this tariff are owned by Chinese and German parent companies.

Anti-dumping duties on solar have been around for a while, up to ~150%! https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3365766/US-imposes-new...

Doesn’t this ultimately raise the price of solar in the US though? Either buy from established Chinese factories at a tarrif adjusted price, or buy from less established US manufacturers at the price they can manage - a higher price than the Chinese factories.

One could imagine instead that the US government competes with China by providing its own solar subsidies. Of course, the republicans would rather the price of solar go up and the government spend money on green energy subsidies...

But it’s clear that making the US competitive in solar isn’t the sole motivation here.

But are unilateral tariffs like this one actually helpful in combatting this?

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