Slashdot Mirror

You're denying that the cheap solar panels you mentioned are being subsidized by the chinese government in order to control the market.

Chinese solar panels face anti-dumping tarriffs upon import to the US to combat this, in some cases as high as 239%, due to the low-interest loans the Chinese government gives solar manufacturers. And they've faced these tarriffs since 2012. China, for its part, denies that its dumping, and says that the loans are simply an investment in clean power and an attempt to improve the environment. Of the top 10 manufacturers, 4 are from China, 2 from the USA, 2 from Taiwan, one from Canada and one from South Korea.

China not only produces extensively to export, but also has a huge domestic solar consumption as well. For example, China just completed the world's largest floating solar farm. China is the world's largest market for photovoltaics and is the world's largest producer of solar power. They're on track to have over 100 GW installed solar power by 2018 (up from 77GW in 2016). They also use 70% of the world's total installed solar water heating.

After all, they're allowed to ignore US copyright:

http://www.ictsd.org/bridges-n...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01...
http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...

It might not help for stuff published in Europe (or distributed to Europe?), but it'd make it so they'd have the WTO to back them up.

This is what an agenda looks like. I don't know why, but whenever countries meet over AGW, the topic always turns to giving billions of dollars from one group to another.

The fact that you don't like some of the proposed solutions does not mean there is not a problem. Go look at the list of the top 100 companies, the largest political donors, etc. and then try to make a cogent argument as to how big bad environmental and/or poverty lobby has some how convinced 1000s of scientists to participate in whatever strange and huge conspiracy you appear to be proposing.

We are releasing millions of years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and we are doing it on the time scale of decades. To pretend that will not have consequences because all the solutions are ideologically distasteful is appalling.

This is what an agenda looks like. I don't know why, but whenever countries meet over AGW, the topic always turns to giving billions of dollars from one group to another.

Judging from the article linked from the comment above, in the softwood case in question, the WTO backed the US, and NAFTA was the international body which supported the Canadian position.

Either you and lots of mods are dreamin', or you're talking about a different trade conflict with Canada...

This is a really interesting case, in that the U.S. is using a related WTO ruling on this matter to ignore the NAFTA Extraordinary Challenge Committee (ECC) ruling. So, WTO rulings are welcomed on one hand, and ignored on another.

This approach makes it pretty hard to deny assertions that trans-national trade agreements are welcome in the United States, as long as they are favourable; if not, fsck them. This isn't free trade, it is using free trade as a means to remove trade restrictions viewed as punitive or restrictive against U.S. trade.

In my experience, this speaks directly to opposition in Canada against free trade agreements. The folks I argue out the problems of the world over scotch and beer with are not so much against free trade, but rather are skeptical as to whether 'free' has bi-directional meaning in practise.

I can see Russia engaging in more such buttlicking into the near future to gain World Trade Organization membership. It's the unfortunate reality that such organizations yield so much power in the world, yet remain out of reach of any democratic oversight . Especially when democratically-elected heads of nation states engage in secret deals behind closed doors with them.

The US has a long history using it's combined power of trade, diplomacy and intelligence/espionage to further it's goals and the goals of it's private corporation.

(Disclaimer: links below are from various Google searches and are there to give context. They do not necessarily express my views, or even agree with me.)

Echeleon was used in corporate espionage to benefit private US corporation, to the detriment of corporations from US allies.

The US complained to the WTO about the EU policy of banning genetically modified foods. The issue is not yet fully resolved, but looks like the EU must eventually let GM-foods in. US companies are very strong in GM-foods and gene technology in general.

The US (and the EU, Japan and others) oppose a developing nation's right the apply protectionistic economic policies. That's, IMHO, what's really behind the Cancun failure and the Singapore issues (PDF). It's also two-faced, disgusting and imperialistic as about anything in the world today.

The US is using strongarm tactics in exporting it's brand of copyright laws.

The US has by no means limited it's interference to humans rights or other laudable goals. To suggest so it at best naive, but maybe "willfully ignorant to the point of being harmful to the world around" would be closer.

--Flam