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Court Rules That Imported Solar Panels Are Bad For US Manufacturing (theverge.com)
The International Trade Commission has ruled that American companies are being hurt by cheap solar panels from overseas, providing an opportunity for President Donald Trump to tax imports from countries like China. The Verge reports: Today's unanimous decision ruled that the companies SolarWorld Americans and Suniva were struggling financially not because of their own poor management, but because they couldn't compete with cheap panels from countries like China, Mexico, and South Korea. Suniva is now suggesting import duties of 40 cents a watt for solar cells, and a floor price of 78 cents a watt for panels. (Right now, the average floor price, worldwide, for panels is about 32 cents.) The Solar Energy Industries Association warned that implementing these suggestions could end up doubling the price of solar, thus destroying demand and causing Americans to lose their jobs.
We'll get those coal miners their jobs back, you just wait and see. #crookedHillaryLoses
After all, what's more important - helping cut the costs to increase adoption and cut CO2 emissions, or getting the third vacation home for some local solar company CEO?
That's all solar is - energy from somewhere else!
For Consumers.
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This is a seriously complicated issue. Proper economic modeling can give us a good idea of how to proceed, but political greed will finance whatever spin it may take to move mass opinion in the direction of short term profit for the few people who can afford the spin doctors. Solar futures are now in jeopardy for the US. Sigh.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
This sounds great until you think of the ramifications of more expensive solar panels
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Quite a lot of solar adoption is driven not by a commitment to fighting global warming or pollution in general but by savings. Make the panels more expensive and adoption rates will drop significantly.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
USA! and when it comes down to it we need to cut off china
There are FAR more people employed in the sale and instillation of solar panel than there are in manufacturing.
Raising the price of panels will kill those jobs.
Stupid and shortsighted. Protect a few manufacturing job at companies that can't compete, and lose orders of magnitude more jobs in sales, and instillation.
The only way US manufacturing can compete is through automation. Which means almost no one will be employed in manufacturing.
"The International Trade Commission" is a US group, it has no international mandate. Enacting tariffs will result in the affected countries enacting retaliatory tariffs on US made goods. More US jobs lost. "Dumb and Dumber"
Free markets are a means to an end. They are often very effective at helping us towards our goals, but they are NOT the goals.
The goal ought to be roughly: do whatever maximizes the portion of non-lazy workers who are able to fully support a modest family on a single income.
Usually that means we support business and free trade, but don't confuse business or free trade for the goal.
"Suniva is now suggesting import duties of 40 cents a watt for solar cells, and a floor price of 78 cents a watt for panels. (Right now, the average floor price, worldwide, for panels is about 32 cents.)" The market to purchase solar panels in the States is rigged already. Tax breaks, subsidies, grants, mandates for utilities to buy excess power at market rates, etc. All to promote solar and make it more "affordable." I ask...what is more affordable than hordes of people making less than $2 an hour to stamp panels out...all under the roof of a coal powered factory?
Will it piss of liberals?
Lots of manufacturing jobs have left the USA because it's more expensive to manufacture here. So why pick on solar? Are the foreign solar companies dumping, or are the foreign governments subsidizing, with the aim of driving US companies out of the market? If so, I see the argument for tariffs, but there's nothing about dumping or subsidies in the ruling as far as I can see.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
What good comes from this ruling?
China controls the vast reserves of rare earth minerals that are used in the manufacture of solar panels. The only rare earth mine in the US was shut down by the EPA. China is trying to buy that mine.
The American manufacture of solar panels would still be buying from China because that is about the only source of some of the raw materials. Then the American solar panel manufacturer would soon run up against the EPA again because the manufacture of solar panels, and their destruction at the end of life, produce some of the most toxic chemicals known to man. You are not going to ship those toxic chemicals to China either because China is tightening their regulations on toxic chemical imports.
What good does the ruling do? Buy from China or buy from China, or shut down solar energy in the United States.
Will the price of non-domestic panels still be lower than domestic after tariffs?
Another question is how much the coal/natural gas lobby's have donated to ensure this ruling?
If we can burn coal, or oil, or natural gas, or corncobs to produce cheap electricity does it really matter? If coal becomes a major energy source, I would expect electrical costs to drop significantly. The price probably won't though, because profit....
Are Mexico, Canada and South Korea dumping solar panels for less than cost of production? Are they using slave labor? Do employees work in hazardous conditions?
If not please go fuck yourselves.
For over 50 years now, we've had a stiff tariff on imported light trucks. What was the outcome? The USA is the pickup truck capital of the world.
It looks like with this tariff, we can eventually be the kings solar panel as well. All we need is the right marketing strategy.
If we can get people to pay over $60K for a pickup, we can also get them to support solar panels with high profit margins. A good start would be to market "heavy duty" panels and promote them as an enabler of rugged individualism.
Styling will also be key: for example maybe carbon-fiber frames, menacing hexagonal honeycomb collector grids, and prominent oversized exposed heat sinks on the electronics. Who wouldn't want the most bad-assed roof on their block?
You never know, people might start installing several times the solar capacity they would ever use just so they can brag about their peak kilowatt capacities.
With an excess of panels on the market prices will drop here.
Too bad Supreme Leader Dotard has never had consumers' interests at heart.
Denying Chinese 50+ percent ownership in US assets for as long as they maintain the same restriction on assets in China.
What is killing globalization is the same as what is killing privacy in the US: asymmetric agreements.
The government should not be able to ubiquitously spy on you unless you can do the same to them, and a foreign national should not be allowed to maintain controlling interests in domestic companies if domestic nationals cannot do the same in the foreign country.
Reciprocation. It seems simple to explain, but apparently nobody is getting why it is so important. Or doesn't care, because they are sure they will get theirs even if everybody else isn't.
This isn't about protecting solar manufacturing in the US, it's about protecting the oil industry from solar.
Well, I know which companies to avoid for solar panels.
Not my problem you allowed China to take over REE market while you let big oil play the protectionist racket here.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You make yourself look really stupid. Sadly, you think you are being clever.
It's good that your post is anonymous so that twenty years from now you don't have to look back at it and realize how dumb you were back in 2017.
There are FAR more people employed in the sale and instillation of solar panel than there are in manufacturing. Raising the price of panels will kill those jobs.
But how many of those jobs are held by US citizens or holders of work visas and how many are "undocumented" aliens?
Not saying the latter's jobs don't matter. AM saying that, as far as jobs for the US citizen voters who elected Trump on the promise of more jobs for US citizens (and others with legal work status), job losses for that group don't count. So your argument won't convince them.
Also AM saying that raising the prices can retard other parts of the economy, so it's not that simple.
(Also saying I was planning to buy a couple pallets of solar panels now that they were down into the $0.30/W range - providing enough generation to make my retirement home grid-independent - and this might foul that up. Sigh. It will be interesting to see how it works out.)
"The International Trade Commission" is a US group, it has no international mandate.
Neither does the US presidency, judiciary, congress, or the raft of federal agencies, of which this is one. Per wikipedia:
Saying "it has no international mandate" may make it SOUND like it's some private group, rather than a fully functional and authorized part of the government. But it doesn't make it any less legitimate than any other part of the government.
International relations are an anarchy. Each sovereign country's governmental components don't require any "mandate" from any outside-the-country persons, groups, or governments to be as legitimate as any other governmental component.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The "International Trade Commission" is about as "international" as Trump's ass.
or most of Michigan? Hell, I remember seeing a report where a charity that specialized in medical aid to developing nations was down in Alabama.
If you live in one of the successful cities (New York, Dallas, Phoenix, Los Angelos, etc) it's easy to forget and ignore what a hell hole large swaths of the US became when the manufacturing jobs went overseas. That's also exactly why Trump won. He didn't forget that. He capitalized on it.
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I don't want their cheap panels because they're made with borderline slave labor. We can make more than enough panels here just fine while supporting good middle class jobs and doing it without a heavily abused workforce.
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if those foreign solar panels were made with workers that had an equivalent standard of living as the same American? If they breathed clean air, didn't want for clean water and worked 40 hours a week?
Tariffs can have another effect: forcing countries to compete _fairly_. This isn't a question of one country doing better than another. This is one country willing to abuse it's workers more (China, I'm lookin' at you especially).
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unless you're an idiot. My buddy bought one for $15k, but 200,000 miles on it, got hit, decided he wanted a Prius and got $10k from the settlement _just_for_the_truck.
Americans are leaders in light Trucks because they're incredibly well made, cheap and hold their value. Tariffs made that possible because our industry wasn't crushed by the cheap labor of a country willing to abuse it's workers.
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They are simply using US laws to help protect their inefficiencies.
Suniva is actually a Chinese company trying to get higher margins in the US, and Solarworld Americas I believe is a German company.
Why are you posting notes to yourself on Slashdot?
Wouldn't a personal blog or a block of post-it notes be more practical?
Yup. And Elon is ready to unveil an electric one in a few weeks.
A semi-truck.
I.e. A semi-trailer truck.
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride tentatively scheduled for Oct 26th in Hawthorne. Worth seeing this beast in person. It's unreal.
4:20 PM - 13 Sep 2017
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In Europe, Germany especially, solar panel manufacturing was The Next Big Thing around ten years ago. Many companies were investing billions in R&D and new manufacturing facilities and their stocks soared sky-high. Then Chinese companies got large amounts of state support and started making cheap solar panels that weren't as good, but were so much cheaper that the European companies who poured vast amounts of money in R&D, had to pay European wages and abide European environmental laws couldn't compete anymore. Some moved their production to cheaper places, others went bankrupt. The R&D is gone, too, and the production of the cheap solar panels from China comes at the cost of a lot of pollution. China has already started phasing out state support for the Chinese solar panel makers, so they won't remain as cheap as they are now forever, too.
I believe Japanese companies also largely stopped making solar panels because of unfair competition from China.
'cos the funny thing is power lines are easier to drop and affect everyone downline of it, mostly, while a solar panel is more robust and if blown off will only affect that one house. Which already has bigger problems than being out of power: no roof.
Businesses rally behind the "free market" when it suits then, but when that same free market bites them in the ass, they run crying to the government for relief.
I'm interested to know why costs in the US are so high. One could decry cheap labour from China and Mexico, but in that case, why is South Korea included in the list of countries that are keeping prices down? Moreover, solar panel manufacturing is a largely-automated process, pushing labour costs down even more...
Sounds like mismanagement to me...
... but we don't want the Irish.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That may mean an over supply of solar panels so there is a good chance I will see a drop in Price in New Zealand.
This is a good thing for all of us outside the USA.
Thou shall not generate thy own electricity and power thy dwelling after massive hurricanes, or else! Omen! (evil music continues...)
His companies all depend on subsidies. SolarCity is struggling as direct subsidies are phased out. Now he's going back to the well for more.
Please explain...
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
A +100% import tax? Are they insane. I can believe government support of a few per cent (5-10%) but 100%? Sounds like someone is more interested in keeping out competition and driving up their own profits. I wonder where all of this outrage has been for the past few decades as various (other) electronics manufacturing has been moved to the same region of the planet.
...until the ROI for solar is worth it. Right now, for my home, with cells and battery packs for storage, even after 30 years, I'll have saved money just buying power from the electric company.
It would take almost 40 years to break even.
When they solve THAT problem, then solar will be more than just for hippies and fake environmentalists
Could it be about bringing back wonderful oil and coal.... Give me a break, same shit in Europe. Simply an excuse to keep the monopolies till they've built out their infrastructure so they can keep consumers from becoming energy independent
It's why she lost. She didn't campaign in the rust belt swing states. There were stories of the DNC down there freaking out because nobody was showing up to help them win. She bought into that "Blue Firewall" nonsense and figured since the voted Obama they'd vote for her. She lost by a hair's breath. All she had to do to win was stop wasting time in Arizona and hit the pavement in the states that mattered.
But well, she always was arrogant as heck. That was one of the main faults people sited for not liking her, and well, elections are popularity contests...
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allowing solar onto the grid is a gamble.
if you buy cheap door hinges from china nobody is going to cry or die
if your door falls off in 5 years.
however, with grid-tie solar, one could "paranoidi-fy" the situation as a ... people will cry and die.
covert attack by china (manufacturers) on the electricity grid, because "we-are-free-to-consume-and-buy-what we-what" americans look at the price tag and not the quality (? how to know)
thus the situation might arise that nobody (least the government: "we have other problems then to baby-sit you; like make you vote for us") actually checked the long-term quality issues of this massively grid connected solar-panels
when the doors on the grid come unhinged in a few years because of mass failure of solar panels
it would be nice if one could once for a change decide that some federal (or dare i say GLOBAL) standard/norm would be agreed
upon, maybe even in french, under the eiffel tower, that would guarantee that the grids door will open and close "as intended" in 20 years.
I support this for short term; but nothing permanent. We don't want another GM, Chrysler, Ford getting protection from the gov, and then going complacent.
Face it. We live inside what is essentially an economic Iron Curtain.
Have gnu, will travel.
Seriously? Lets hurt the solar market to support two companies that can't get lower prices?
"providing an opportunity for President Donald Trump to tax imports from countries like China"
Awwww, Little Donnie Two Scoops is gonna start a trade was with China...how adorable!
I'm sure everyone will benefit from this latest bout of "my micro-dick is bigger than your micro-dick" diplomacy. Especially the Chinese corporations.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Let's just tarriff everything. Fuck this pick and choose shit. BTW, it would be perfectly fine for them to tarriff the US as well. What goes around comes around.
When a company can not compete the expectation is that they go under. I suspect that the typical failure in industry these days is because a company failed to automate properly. No longer can the price of labor be a valid excuse. Sometimes older company leaders resist new ways and that kills the company. But more often it is the price or difficulty of getting enough money to properly set up a company as changes are expensive. The poor workers suffer while the owners simply move their investment money to a more profitable investment. If anything we need financial programs to support displaced workers and i do not mean get by types of funding them but real, livable wages for all workers whether they are working or not.
The full title being the United States International Trade Commission and in this case functioning as the lobbying arm of the native US solar power industry. What's this self serving political waffle doing on a technology forum.
.. federal agency of the United States .. The President nominates and the U.S. Senate confirms the six commissioners who make up the USITC"
"The United States International Trade Commission is an
When the federal government spends money on mandatory and discretionary programs, the U.S. Treasury writes a check to pay the program costs. But there is another type of federal spending that operates a little differently. Lawmakers have written hundreds of tax breaks into the federal tax code - for instance, special low tax rates on capital gains, and a deduction for home mortgage interest - in order to promote certain activities they deem beneficial to society. In fact, tax breaks function as a type of government spending, and they are officially called "tax expenditures" within the federal government. When the government issues a tax break, it chooses to give up tax revenue for a specific purpose - so both spending and tax breaks mean less money in the U.S. Treasury, and both reflect spending priorities laid out by Congress in various pieces of legislation. Tax breaks are expected to cost the federal government $1.22 trillion in 2015 - more than all discretionary spending in the same year.
There you go, stop subsidizing big business and rich people, then you can pay for your healthcare like every other civilised country.
Uh . . . the foreign competition isn't selling to U.S. at a loss, not being subsidized, selling a product that doesn't have a home country resource advantage (silicon hard to get?), is made mostly without much labor input. What's the problem?
Uh . . . the foreign competition isn't selling at a loss, even with overseas shipping costs, they aren't being subsidized, the raw materials aren't hard to get (silicon?), they are made by automated machinery and don't need much in the way of labor input. What's the problem? Down the road costs for the existing labor? Yeah . . . that's it (I say, while pulling U.S. manufacturer's fat out of the fire).