Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Imposes Tariffs On Chinese Solar Cells
New submitter kimtysirt sends this excerpt from a Bloomberg report about U.S. tariffs for Chinese solar panels:
"The U.S. yesterday imposed tariffs of as much as 250 percent on Chinese-made solar cells to aid domestic manufacturers beset by foreign competition, though critics said the decision may end up raising prices and hurting the U.S. renewable energy industry. The U.S. Commerce Department ruled that Chinese manufacturers sold cells in the U.S. at prices below the cost of production and announced preliminary antidumping duties ranging from 31 percent to 250 percent, depending on the manufacturer. China criticized the action, saying the U.S. is hurting itself and cooperation between the world’s two largest economies. The decision is meant to provide a boost to the U.S. solar manufacturing industry, where four companies filed for bankruptcy in the past year."
As someone who knows what foreign manufacturing does to local economy (UK based and lived through the death of Sheffield Steel and British Coal), this is the only fix - to impose tariffs on foreign made goods, because we do have the technology and infrastructure to make this stuff ourselves; the only thing we're doing by outsourcing is PUTTING PEOPLE OUT OF WORK. This (taxing foreign goods) stimulates the local economy; hands up those who think this is in any way bad??
I would do the same thing to fix the auto industry (and raw materials eg refined aluminium and steel/alloys). Why? Because we've outsourced to Japan and China, they're getting rich selling us shitty cars, while our local auto industry (which used to make quality cars most of which still run after 20, 30, 40 or even 50+ years! Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Leyland, Rover...) has died a death or sold out to BMW who get most of their coachwork from... CHINA!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
How would they run out of money? The government of China has and can force its banks to give loans that essentially never have to be repaid to these vendors.
Why would they? What would the Chinese government gain by flooding the solar panels market with things that cost more than they sell for?
Are you being serious? Dumping is a well understood practice. I will put it in Slashdot terms.
Step 1: Set up huge industry with government captial
Step 2: Start selling goods in foreign markets at well below what it cost to make them
Step 3: Watch as foreign competitors go bankrupt
Step 4: Crank up prices as no competition is left, then lend foreigners the money needed to buy goods
Step 5: ???
The question marks are at the end because the only thing unknown about this situation is whether china will use their wealth to simply buy up everything in the world, or to buy up just the military might and then watch as all the peasant nations fight over who will get to supply china with movies and music.
They've already done this with vitamins. There are no longer any domestic producers and the Chinese increased their prices as soon as the competition went away. Yes, we could re-enter the market, but the start up costs are non-trivial. And what's to stop the Chinese from doing the same thing all over again? That's what makes a significant barrier to market entry.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Uh, Wal Mart is still selling generics at $4 per refill. Where are the raised prices?
The thing is, corn isn't subsidized because the government wants cheap HFCS. It's subsidized because the government wants overproduction of food so we won't have people going hungry if there's a bunch of crop failures like in the 1930s. Cheap HFCS is merely a side effect ("gee, what can we do with all this excess corn?"). You can make completely valid and compelling arguments against cheap HFCS, but they won't get you anywhere because you're cherry-picking the most unfavorable aspect of corn subsidies to try to make them look bad. You're not addressing the real issue. The starvation argument will win out every time simply because it's more important. If you want to end corn subsidies, you need to address it from the starvation/crop failure angle.