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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!
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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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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...
Unfortunately, there are millions of people in this country that fit that description. They have more money than sense, they buy these pickup trucks that can't even fit in a reasonable parking spot, then they complain that they work too hard for what they have, complain about OTHER PEOPLE acting entitled, and they vote for people like Trump...
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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Face it. We live inside what is essentially an economic Iron Curtain.
Have gnu, will travel.