Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Solyndra got cheap loans from the Obama administration, yet they want belly up despite their unfair advantages.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
how about a probe of china currency rigging?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
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!"
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.
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.
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.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
US protectionism = patriotism
Foreign country protectionism = communism
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!
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.
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.
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).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
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.
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.