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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.
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?
Dream on, coal is dead and is not coming back. Now the US has held back from producing solar technology. Wants to institute protectionism to make up for poor planning. Wait till the wto steps us and says the US is unfairly charging tariffs allowing other countries to charge tariffs too.
All that are hurt are US citizens. China will sell its solar cells someplace else and US will lose those markets too. Poor planning.
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.
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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.
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.
Another question is how much the coal/natural gas lobby's have donated to ensure this ruling?
I love conspiracy theories, but this one just doesn't fit the facts:
1. This is a court ruling, not a legislative or regulatory issue, and lobbyists don't talk to judges.
2. Coal producers are mostly broke, and would be unlikely to benefit much from less solar since no new coal plants are being built. The benefits would mostly go to NG.
3. The NG industry is dominated by independent frackers who are way too disorganized to effectively lobby for something like this.
Solar is still less than 1%, Coal and NG have more to gain by fighting each other. Coals biggest competitive adversary is gas, and will be for a long time.
That's just not true.. no one (at least in appreciable numbers) buys US made pickup trucks overseas in general.. so the demand is low.. the US makes most of the vehicles for the north American market (NAFTA anyone?) but outside of that, most countries build their own as its a utility vehicle that has brand association.
And most of the trucks in the US are not technically imported, they are assembled in Canada/Mexico and the US (either through part replacement schemes, cab shipments, or kits), which classifies them as an American vehicle (ie no import tariffs). But this hurts no one but the consumer since those that don't want to even bother with the hassle they just don't sell them to the US.. (which basically means the US market is a US ONLY market which keeps the prices high because they have zero competition or even incentive to make a better product). Or to put it another way, its a geopolitical monopoly.. and we all know monopolies can be good, but are usually bad because the audience is captive.
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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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