U.S. Imposes Steep Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Because the alternative is just too stupid to consider. Making solar panels as they exist today is 1) a commodity business and 2) very, very, very simple. Surely no one would be stupid enough to believe that US manufacturing could be cost-competitive with China in manufacturing a product where the sole complexity lies in sourcing high purity silicon? There aren't even any manufacturing jobs involved here, it's probably 100% automated.
Some argue that China is subsidizing chinese solar panel manufacturers and thereby distorting the market. But then that's not even necessary, as explained nobody would be insanse enough to try and rival them by manufacturing a commodity in the US when you would have to ship the silicon over from China first.
So the effect chinese solar subsidies are having is making solar panels extremely cheap for Americans, transforming the way the US generates energy. They're financing our switch to clean energy.
And then the US government goes ahead and forces everyone in the country to pay more for something they could have gotten cheaper for whatever reason. Is no one disturbed by this?
Perhaps, if individuals were to have more say in what, where or how much of there taxed money gets spent on. Or, if to go even further, they had the a real choice in whether or not they even gave money to the state?
Maybe things will change under the next administration? You might remember Obama making a lot of noise about "green jobs" for Americans so a future Republican president might feel that American solar manufacturers are going to be against him no matter what and so remove the import barriers. But then again the people who care about lowering the barriers are also traditionally aligned against the Republicans so I'm not sure the politics works out.
The people who make solar panels in the US are a preposterously small constituency.
The thing to remember is that cheap Chinese solar panels don't just compete with less-cheap American solar panels, they also compete with oil, coal and every other source of generating electricity.
Fossil fuel companies fight the construction of nuclear plants by claiming we should be building solar instead, because they know if they prevent nuclear then solar isn't cost competitive with fossil fuels. Then they make sure solar isn't cost competitive by doing things like this. And if that doesn't work they do what OPEC has been doing recently and increase production so that fossil fuel prices fall.
It's not a "conspiracy" -- it's companies and OPEC-member governments acting in their own rational self-interest. (If you can call ignoring climate change rational.)
Well considering the vast majority of polysilicon is made outside of China and the US itself is actually one of the major producers of it, I don't see why you'd have to ship it out of China first.
Also exactly why would US automated commodity manufacturing not be cost-competitive with China? We produce a huge amount of commodities. They compete just fine with the Chinese.
And more importantly, are you trying to imply that the commodities businesses are somehow not valuable and we should just not have dumping laws?
http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2014/12/18/china-solar-l... "...the new ruling will have limited impact as Chinese solar companies have adjusted strategy since the preliminary decision."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/business/energy-environmen...
Many of the Chinese solar manufacturers are again making a profit. I find evidence that people are intentionally making panels below cost to be dubious. There was a war for market share and a lot of companies like Suntech Power went bankrupt. Seems like the market is working.
SunTech of course famously imploded. So did LDK Solar.
Trina Solar has been losing money for years: $376m in losses over fiscal 2011/12/13.
ReneSola lost $501m over 2011/12/13
JS Solar lost $433m over 2011/12/13.
Yingli Green Energy lost $1.32 billion over 2011/12/13.
And in almost all of these instances, these companies lost money every single year referenced.
Some of these companies have started to produce some profits again, with formerly very high oil. That of course is likely to reverse as fast as it surfaced. Politics move slower than quarterly results however, and the tariffs have likely been planned or lobbied for, for years.
No. We should be committed to reducing carbon emissions.
But so far, because we're not very good at thinking as a species and not just as individuals motivated solely by short-term competitive self-interest, we're very much not.
Doing something that covertly benefits oil and coal companies is an easy political maneuver, but that doesn't mean it isn't right.
China has had the same modus operandi for decades. Make sure manufacturing in China is cheaper than manufacturing anywhere else so that everything is manufactured in China. China likes this because it provides jobs for their people and gives them economic strength, everyone else likes it because they get cheap stuff.
But automation is changing the math. Having cheap labor doesn't matter as much when you only need 5% as many workers as you once did. So for China to keep its advantage it has to subsidize. They've always done that indirectly (e.g. devaluing their currency), and US manufacturers have complained about it, but not enough to overcome our desire for cheap stuff. Now they're having to subsidize more directly, and even then the cost difference between the Chinese stuff and the American stuff isn't that large -- imposing tariffs on China wont make the panels that much more expensive, they'll only cause them to be made in the US.
Capitalism. it's really hard to tell what's really an issue and what's abject greed.
This is a grid tie system. No batteries. In the city we're not concerned with 100% off grid solutions. PG&E our provider has contracted with me as a power provider. So excess power is banked and credited over a period of 12 months.
Also, the system is easily extensible. I'll be adding another 3KW for another tax write off this year. No additional inspections required as the micro-inverters don't need a central monolithic inverter which need to be increased as the number of panels increases.
A political choice has been made.
Let's see how it goes in the long run.
Even looking at them through friendly eyes, you would have to conclude they were idiots for building a factory there.