China Probes US Renewable Energy Policy

PolygamousRanchKid writes "China's Commerce Ministry on Friday announced an investigation into U.S. government policy and subsidy support for renewable energy, after a U.S. decision earlier this month to probe sales of Chinese-made solar panels in the United States. 'The Ministry of Commerce has decided to initiate a trade barrier investigation into policy support and subsidies for the U.S. renewable energy sector,' a statement on the ministry's website (www.mofcom.gov.cn) said. The announcement said Chinese companies argued that the U.S. policies 'constitute a trade barrier against the export of Chinese renewable energy products to the United States.'"

Comments

Remember Solyndra

[xiando]

Solyndra got cheap loans from the Obama administration, yet they want belly up despite their unfair advantages.

Re:Remember Solyndra

[Anonymous Coward]

No one "dumped" motorcycles here in the US - ever.

Harleys are over priced junk. Harley hasn't made a decent bike since the 1940s.

Harley are loud, they run horribly, they're slow - they're made for old guys who like to pretend that they're rough and tough and can give up their accounting or dental practice whenever they want and hit the road with Jack Nicholson and Pete Fonda. I guess they ride a Harley to look like low life trash.

I don't know what happened to society - it's like everyone aspires to be trash: white biker trash, black gangsta trash, or some other type of thuggy trash with tattoos and piercings.

Re:Remember Solyndra

[517714]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the failure is in the free market. The need for a competitive industry has been removed by government subsidies on the installation of solar panels - solar panels do not have to be cost effective because 40% of the cost is paid by other people (taxpayers). It is a typical outcome of governmental interference, and your solution would undoubtedly be more governmental interference with more cost to the taxpayers and no tangible benefits.

Re:Remember Solyndra

[man_of_mr_e]

First, that 40% will likely pay for itself. Partially in the amount of load taken off the power grid, and partially in how much carbon footprint it will save. But, even ignoring that, this ignores the other benefits that come from developing new technologies. You need to fund the primitive technology in order for it to improve to the point where it becomes ubiquitious. Do you really think we'd have computers in our cell phones more powerful than desktops of 10 years ago if people didn't buy the inefficient computers way back when?

Technology has to progress, and that means people have to buy it, otherwise there are no funds for the next generation of product.

Re:Remember Solyndra

[TheEyes]

I don't remember rebates or subsidies from the government on computers for consumers. The industry was initially funded largely by the government with defense and other agencies purchases, but never any subsidies. The government did not make computers cheap or efficient or powerful, consumer demand did.

"Defense and other agencies purchases" is a subsidy! More than that, though, just because you don't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen: NASA, DARPA and the military built the computer industry as part of the massive funding binges that were the space race and the Cold War push for intelligence gathering (spy satellites, code breaking, etc). It took decades before the 1980s made the personal computer profitable from a consumer standpoint; before that it was all--or almost all--government supported "purchases" ie. subsidies.

Now we're in a fight for the future with China, and instead of investing in technology we're spending a NASA-sized piece of the budget on air-conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lambasting Solyndra because it was left to fend for itself against a Chinese trade war machine. You think China isn't already thinking this way? Look at rare earth metals; China spent a decade killing the market by subsidizing their mines, and now that they have a monopoly they're using it to extract concessions from Japan by "restricting" exports.

Politicians bleat about "not wanting to start a trade war." Start one? We're in one; we're just losing!

Re:Remember Solyndra

[rrohbeck]

Loud pipes save lives. Maybe if everyone else wasn't fucking around in their cars and were watching the road, I wouldn't need to pour 50G decibels into the air just to avoid getting ran over at a red light.

Loud pipes kill.
1. It has been shown again (e.g. by the the NHTSA) and again that a cager won't hear you before it's too late.
2. Environmental noise, especially if it's intermittent and/or at night, has been shown to increase cardiovascular disease.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to do everything we can to protect our economy from China. China complaining just shows we are starting to do things right.

Re:Good

[Ethanol-fueled]

I agree, and I don't know why protectionism and nationalism are such bad words here. Looking out for yourself and talking pride in yourself in a dog-eat-dog world are both actions of a healthy individual, but now we as a nation could be personified as a drug-addicted whore peddling our ass on the street, occasionally starting senseless fights.

There's a lot of money involved in our domestic and government work. If we can ban outsourcing (for example) at the expense of some executive's multi-million dollar bonus, so be it. A decent paycheck should be enough. Let the greedy fuckers move to Dubai if they want personal tennis courts and multi-million dollar bonuses.

how about a probe of china currency rigging?

[GodfatherofSoul]

how about a probe of china currency rigging?

Re:how about a probe of china currency rigging?

[xiando]

How about a an audit of the Federal Reserve and a probe of their currency manipulation? You do realize that the sole purpose of the QE packages was to push the US dollar down? The US is the biggest currency manipulator of them all. You should generally not throw stones when you are sitting in a glass house.

Re:how about a probe of china currency rigging?

[hedwards]

That's not really interesting. I take it you've forgotten about all the USD that China has borrowed to artificially depress the cost of its labor. Much of the collapse was a direct result of Americans being unable to pay for the things they bought. That's not entirely the fault of the Chinese government, but they Chinese government did have a prominent hand in making it harder and harder for families to be able to afford even basic necessities like health care. And the Chinese government did extend credit to the US specifically to better its own economy without any concern for the legality of doing so.

QE itself isn't an issue the way that you think it is. The vast majority of that money is metaphorically sitting in bank vaults and has yet to hit the economy. It's effectively no different than if they had just changed the FDIC regulations to require banks to hold less in reserve.

Then again, given the name, I have a feeling that you know precisely zero about what's really going on in the world outside of China or are otherwise blinded.

He said, She said.

[brit74]

I see China is mastering the art of He said, she said.

Back in the day, the US would (correctly) accuse China of something and it would go unanswered, so everyone would assume it was true:
US: "China's doing bad things."
China: (silence)
Populace: "Yeah, I guess it's true."

Now, in the 21st century, it goes like this:
US: "China's doing bad things."
China: "The US is doing bad things."
Populace: "Well, both sides are accusing each other. I guess they're both equally bad. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, right?"
China: (Laughs maniacally, thinks "This is the best way to do public relations. We don't even have to change anything.")

Reminds me of how China would constantly get hit with human-rights abuses accusations, then they started writing up biased reports against everyone else. "See, everyone else in the world is just as bad!"

Currency Value

[inhuman_4]

Those whole issue of subsidies and trade with China are moot. Chinese currency policy already has a far greater impact on trade than any tariff or subsidy. China likes to claim that they don't manipulate their currency to gain an advantage but that is bold faced lie. European empires played currency games with each other for centuries and Japan/South Korea did the same in the 70s and 80s, we know exactly what it looks like.

Countries suppress the value of their currency to aid exports. The result is a massive trade imbalance, huge currency reserves, and lots of inflation. Now these things can happen without currency manipulation for a short while. But when the effect is massive and long lasting its a pretty good indication of government intervention.

Is everyone loving Globalization yet?

[Beelzebud]

This whole globalization scheme is working out wonderfully. We'll have a global aristocracy at the end of the decade if we can just keep it from blowing up.

How about...

[gabrieltss]

China takes a flying F@#$ off a cliff. isn't this the pot calling the kettle black! We should tell China to go to hell. We should put tariffs in place for any and ALL goods coming FROM China into the U.S.. That might level the playing field with their blatant currency manipulations.

Let's blow up the economy

[sjbe]

We should put tariffs in place for any and ALL goods coming FROM China into the U.S.

And what do you hope to accomplish with doing that? You think causing a global recession, massive increases in a huge array of products, and significant damage to the multitude of business that do business with the worlds second largest economy is a good thing? Relations with China are not nearly as simple as you seem to believe...

That might level the playing field with their blatant currency manipulations.

China is/was manipulating their currency but that's not really as big a problem as it is often made out to be - certainly not the biggest problem. There are bigger problems. Forget currency subsidies, a lot of the large Chinese manufacturing concerns are directly owned by the government (including the military) and are given the sorts of advantages you might expect in such a situation. US companies have rarely been permitted to operate with the same degree of freedom in China that they enjoy elsewhere. The playing field is definitely not level over there. Doesn't mean US companies can't compete at all, but it is hard when the government is your direct competitor.

Plus a lot of the reason much manufacturing has moved there is simply that China has a lot of inexpensive labor. They have 5X the population of the US so labor is a resource they have an ample supply of. If you have a lot of something you can charge less for it. Simple supply and demand. That means goods with a high labor content are far more likely to be produced there. Having lots of people creates problems but it also is a competitive advantage in some ways too.

Re:Let's blow up the economy

[joocemann]

Protective tarriffs are the best solution to our national ecnomic woes. You're acting like trade defcits and exploit of people and environment by proxy of "free trade" are acceptable so long as to keep one economy, China's, afloat. That's stupid.

Products from foreign sources ought be taxed to matc equal locally produced products. Labor/outsourcing for US businesses, done in places of very low cost of living, needs to be taxed as an import to maintain competitive involvement in employing our own people.

This is what a country that serves its people does to protect their overall beneft and stability.
The only thing outsourced and chinese produced products does is it givesa slightly lower cost product, usually of inferior production quality, that only shareholders and ceos can benefit frm. Us employment drops, worker supply increases, and then you have skilled individuals that aren't capable of affording a home because wages are driven downward. Exacerbate the issue with h1b visas and you've got massive unemployment in the face of very few people reaping massive profits.

When your country representsyou, it doesn't let a very smal fraction fuck everyone else over like this.

Re:Let's blow up the economy

[FooAtWFU]

Protective tariffs, like Smoot-Hawley, widely credited with taking the panic of 1929 and turning it into the Great Depression? Has there ever been a historic incidence of a nation isolating themselves into prosperity?

Economic growth outside of the US is huge. Economic growth inside the US, even in good times, is modest. If we want to prosper as a nation, we need to trade with the world, and that means free trade.

If you'd like to see more investment in manufacturing output in these parts, perhaps we could start by doing something about the egregiously stupid parts of the tax regime, like the ones on repatriating foreign profits? Because if companies can't repatriate foreign profits without insane taxes, they'll just reinvest it overseas. Then we can talk about things like the stability and efficiency of the regulatory regime. And our corporate tax rate, once one of the world's lowest (but no longer).

Same old USA...

[bazmail]

US protectionism = patriotism

Foreign country protectionism = communism

Re:Same old USA...

[thaylin]

No, however it is the only country who openly tries to do it themselves and calls it patriotism, while condemning others that do it all at once.

Not True!

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of the collapse was a direct result of Americans being unable to pay for the things they bought.

This is blatantly false. There were bad loans, but they did not cause the collapse. The collapse was caused by packaging these loans together, reselling them, chopping them up, mixing them with other chopped up packages, rating these re-packaged loans fraudulently high, de-regulation on the insurance for these loans that did not have to be backed by sufficient capitol, and the ratings groups betting against the packages that they rated high.

To say this collapse was caused by Americans being unable to pay for the things they bought is naive at best. The average American home buyer deserves some of the blame to be as gullible as they were to over extend themselves on homes they clearly could not afford. But this must be tempered by the fact that they were often duped into believing they could afford it, and we are STILL having to fight tooth and nail to get regulation on the loan industry to get the terms of a loan clearly stated in plain english!

It's the plan

[MikeMo]

China has done exceptionally well partly because they pegged their currency to be lower than ours a specific amount. This has been true for over 20 years. That makes it impossible for us to sell things to them at a competitive price, and impossible to make things here cheaper than they make them there. That is illegal currency manipulation, and is vastly different from what the Fed did.

A big part of the housing crisis was caused by China flooding the market with cheap dollars. They wanted their money invested (whether part of a nefarious plot or not), and Western loans against real estate is where it went. When all of the good borrowers had homes, the investors (China) lowered the standards that underwriters had to follow, and the underwriters were more than happy to write the new loans. When that tier of borrower dried up, they lowered their standards again. And so on. It got to the point where all you needed to buy a house was to sign a paper saying you could afford it.

Of course, the banks were more than happy to be the conduits because they shared no risk - all of the loans were sold.

We all bear responsibility for the crash - all of us that borrowed that cheap money, and all of us that buy things from China to save a buck or two.

Re: China has "borrowed" USD.

[saleenS281]

Our country would still have expensive but quality products if it weren't for China. It wouldn't be broke, because the production of those goods would be coming from factories in the US who pay greater than slave wages for production. Instead of rampant unemployment, we'd have unskilled labor working in factories - just like we did when China was busy starving it's people for the last century.

I'll take a lawnmower that lasts a decade for $500 over a lawnmower that lasts 6 months for $100 all day long. You continue to believe that China is somehow helping the US - I've never heard a more comical explanation of the China/US relationship.