U.S. Imposes Tariffs On Chinese Solar Cells 345
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."
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:5, Informative)
They can corner the market on the cells. They did this with Rare Earths already. They undercut everyone on price, then starting instituting policies limiting exports of raw rare earths.
I would assume the long term goal is similar, limit sales of non-finished panels once there are no competing producers of cells.
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:5, Informative)
Why would they? What would the Chinese government gain by flooding the solar panels market with things that cost more than they sell for?
Dumping is a common tactic for gaining market share. Competitors go out of business or get bought up by you. Then when you have enough market share and eliminated enough competition, you gain pricing power, the ability to price things above the rate in a competitive market. The profit from that can pay for the costs incurred during the dumping phase.
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:5, Informative)
I thought this [wikipedia.org] was common knowledge:
Maybe it would help if you read beyond one or two of those headlines you're going on about.
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:5, Informative)
A free market is a market with zero regulations or taxes. Zero.
"Free market" in the sense of a market with no rules, is an oxymoron. A "market" IS a set of rules/regulations for trade, the most basic of these being property rights, it's paradoxical nonsense to want a set of rules for trade that has no rules. The "free" in free market actually means anyone is free to participate in the market povided they play by the rules. I don't understand why such a large number of people in the US have trouble understanding the concept, they use it every day, no?
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:3, Informative)
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/06/27/254700/walmart-raises-price-diabetes-medication
Re:Yes, it will raise prices (Score:5, Informative)
How many GM cars are sold in China? What is the number 1 selling car in China, and what does it look like?
The top selling car right now is the Buick Excelle manufactured by GM Daewoo and assembled in China by Shanghai General Motors Company Limited. This is a legitimate arrangement.
This is why you won't see a Chinese manufacturer open a plant in America.
Suntech Opens New U.S. Manufacturing Plant [renewableenergyworld.com]
China offshores manufacturing to the U.S. [cnn.com]
Chinese Open First Car Plant in Europe [spiegel.de]
IP created in China belongs to the people
The United States successfully ignored international copyright and patent claims for over a century; it is hardly surprising that other nations that do not have a developed IP industry would follow the same route: An Economic History of Copyright in Europe and the United States [eh.net]
The U.S. was long a net importer of literary and artistic works, especially from England, which implied that recognition of foreign copyrights would have led to a net deficit in international royalty payments. The Copyright Act recognized this when it specified that "nothing in this act shall be construed to extend to prohibit the importation or vending, reprinting or publishing within the United States, of any map, chart, book or books ... by any person not a citizen of the United States." Thus, the statutes explicitly authorized Americans to take free advantage of the cultural output of other countries. As a result, it was alleged that American publishers "indiscriminately reprinted books by foreign authors without even the pretence of acknowledgement." The tendency to reprint foreign works was encouraged by the existence of tariffs on imported books that ranged as high as 25 percent.
The United States stood out in contrast to countries such as France, where Louis Napoleon's Decree of 1852 prohibited counterfeiting of both foreign and domestic works. Other countries which were affected by American piracy retaliated by refusing to recognize American copyrights. Despite the lobbying of numerous authors and celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic, the American copyright statutes did not allow for copyright protection of foreign works for fully one century. As a result, American publishers and producers freely pirated foreign literature, art, and drama.