Trump Administration Approves Tariffs of 30 Percent On Imported Solar Panels (axios.com) 445
The Trump administration just approved tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels. Axios explains why it matters: "Most of the American solar industry has opposed tariffs on panels, saying they would raise prices and hurt the sector. A small group of solar panel manufacturers argued -- successfully -- that an influx of cheap imports, largely from China or Chinese-owned companies, was hurting domestic manufacturing. It's also part of President Trump's broader trade agenda against China." From the report: The tariffs would last for four years and decline in increments of 5% from 30%: 25%, 20% and finally 15% in the fourth year. The tariffs are lower than the 35% the U.S. International Trade Commission had initially recommended last year, per Bloomberg. This is actually the third, and broadest, set of tariffs the U.S. government has issued on solar imports in recent years. The Obama administration issued two earlier rounds of tariffs on a narrower set of imports. Monday's action also imposed import tariffs on washing machines, a much lower profile issue than solar energy.
TRUMP'S GONNA KILL US ALL!! AGAIN! (Score:3, Funny)
How many times does Trump have to literally extinguish all life on planet earth before you fools listen?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/29/opinions/trump-signs-earth-death-warrant-jones/index.html [cnn.com]
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-could-destroy-entire-human-species-says-yale-psychiatrist-who-warned-772328 [newsweek.com]
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-nuclear-weapons-holocaust-congress-710653 [newsweek.com]
https://news.grabien.com/story-cnn-govt-shutdown-risks-undetected-asteroid-strike [grabien.com]
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I don't know, how many times has Trump extinguished all life on this planet? Can you give us some hard numbers? i've search google for it and I've come up with nothing.
Why don't you get back to us with some hard numbers on this.
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Boy some mods really hate it when you ask for hard data on someone hysterical rants. Especially if it shines light on their narrow view of the world.
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Where is your proof that you searched google and came up with nothing? You have yet to show any evidence of your claim.
When you have several peer-reviewed citations that you have searched google and come up with nothing, we may take you more seriously.
Probably not, though.
Re:TRUMP'S GONNA KILL US ALL!! AGAIN! (Score:5, Funny)
Well I would be more worried if you did take me seriously here. I think it's fairly obvious to every one but a few, and you, that I'm being sarcastic.
So did you ever apologize for that homophobic comment you made?
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You are one sad little man aren't you. I'm not sure what has gotten you so fixated on stalking me around Slashdot with your homophobic rants but that is fine. Whatever floats your boat.
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Plus he totally ignored Kevin when he was lost in the Trump Hotel in "Home Alone 2."
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They're shooting a remake of that scene, with Stormy Daniels playing the part of Macaulay Culkin.
Re: TRUMP'S GONNA KILL US ALL!! AGAIN! (Score:4, Funny)
How many times does Trump have to literally extinguish all life on planet earth before you fools listen?
You literally have no idea what the word 'literally' means, do you?
Assuming you still live on planet earth, I don't think he has even once 'literally' extinguished all life on the planet...
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What will happen during Trump's presidency remains to be seen. In the first year we've seen economic growth, is anyone disputing that? Anyway, I think it's interesting to keep note of the headlines as times goes on.
Back in February 2017: "Trump is upset the media is not reporting a meaningless statistic about the national debt" https://www.washingtonpost.com. [washingtonpost.com]
Not sure if this is good or not (Score:4, Interesting)
Spiraling retaliation ... (Score:5, Informative)
Although economists disagree by how much, the consensus view among economists and economic historians is that "The passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff [wikipedia.org] exacerbated the Great Depression.
The act raised U.S. tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.
True but we live in a very, very different world (Score:2)
Also, most historians agree the tariffs made things worse, but I've yet to meet one that thought the tariffs _caused_ the Depression. Generally it was wealth inequality that
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Re:Spiraling retaliation ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Although economists disagree by how much, the consensus view among economists and economic historians is that "The passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff [wikipedia.org] exacerbated the Great Depression.
The problem with import tariffs is that they're a burden on the many, for the benefit of the few. I don't know about you, but my source of income will in no way increase due to more American workers building solar panels or washing machines, here in the USA. The only thing I'll notice is a higher price at the store on those items.
Since this is such a great idea, why doesn't the Trump administration just go ahead and tariff the fuck out of imported everything? I'm sure the MAGA crowd will absolutely love it when that South Korean-made TV they were eyeballing for the Superbowl costs twice as much (along with just about everything else at Walmart).
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Indeed, but think of why.
If you're depressed and jobless passing a law that increases costs to consumers is like pouring petrol onto a fire to get it to burn better. The reality is if you're trying to help start a fire then the petrol needs to be added before the fire has been lit. The USA still has industries and is currently not in a depression. The passage of the same act in a healthy environment can aid keeping jobs available.
Like the fire, timing is everything.
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If in doubt, make it locally. Tariffs would likely stimulate local manufacturing, and then if we own the industry we don't have to worry about what China might do -- that's a step towards energy independence. Solar panels aren't going away.
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These tariffs might actually reduce employment in the US. Think about it, US factories aren't going to employ that many people because they cost too much compared to robots, and anyway robots are better at this sort of thing (no hair/skin contaminating the panels, higher precision and consistency etc.)
The jobs are in installing solar panels. But if the panels cost more there will be fewer installed. And less on-going maintenance. And less work upgrading the grid to handle the transition. Manufacturing is re
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" Chinese panels are cheap is they don't have much in the way of labor law or environmental regulations"
Partly, but mostly because the industry is heavily subsidized by the government. It's significantly easier to assure you own the market when you have the ability to sell at a loss to prevent competition (especially when protection of IP isn't an issue). After you own the market, then you control the price.
Re:Not sure if this is good or not (Score:5, Insightful)
The American manufacturers aren't going to come in and sell them at the lower price. All that's being done is lower the demand after raising the prices. This is going to put a lot more people who were installing the panels out of work than the number of people who ever going to be employed making them. There are 10,000s people in the US working to install panels and that work can't be outsourced to any other country. Who cares where the panels come from? The cheaper they are, the more projects (residential and industrial) will become viable and started meaning more people employed.
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Care to provide some support for the claim that 50% of pump prices in the USA are taxes?
Yes, in Europe, it's well over 50%, but the USA?
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More than 50% of the price you pay for gasoline at the pump in the US goes to the government in the form of taxes
Gas tax is $0.56 per gallon in California [bankrate.com], one of the highest tax states, while the total price is $2.80 a gallon, making it a 25% tax rate.
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Supposed to go to roads, yes. California raided the coffers so many times that our roads suck, based on the taxes we pay they should be smooth as glass, not tied with the dirt roads in the congo.
I don't think the manufacturing is less efficient (Score:2)
Re: I don't think the manufacturing is less effici (Score:2)
is there some reason 'single payer' healthcare coverage is better than 'employer paid' healthcare coverage?
Success as cost of goods is not good economics. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is awful. basically you are now subsidising local less efficient manufacturing. Everyone loses, less panels will be installed, you may maintain a few manufacturing jobs but they should be offset by the reduction in retail and installer jobs you will lose by increasing costs by 30%.
The problem with modern economic theory is that it doesn't measure success in the right way. It's all about money coming into or out of a country, of the cost of goods, and the cost to manufacture.
Nowhere in those theories is the human cost taken into effect.
In the modern theories, it's always better when you have lower costs, even if those costs result in fewer people being employed. You can have lots of low cost products available, and yet no one can afford to purchase them because no one has the money to
Re: Success as cost of goods is not good economics (Score:4, Insightful)
What you are talking about has been tried many times in the past and has always come out behind the current systems.
The objective should never be to "employ the maximum number of people". That is the intended side effect; not objective. There are many failed and current states that tried to make that an objective. India, Russia, Poland, a few South American countries, a few African countries, etc.
"Modern economics" was built upon these many many lessons learned over centuries. I wouldn't dismiss them so lightly. Given a few considerations, scope, and boundaries, there are slightly better models than today. But, as shitty as our models are, they are far better than the ones before.
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On the other hand Japan is very successful, the world's third largest economy. It's still normal to employ people out of school until retirement there, and they tend to employ what the west would consider an excess of staff but which they consider assets.
In fact, companies that treat workers the way many western companies do, especially US companies in at-will states, are called "black companies" in Japan. They are regarded as basically scams, get-rich-quick schemes for their owners that you would avoid wor
Re: Success as cost of goods is not good economics (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand Japan is very successful, the world's third largest economy. It's still normal to employ people out of school until retirement there, and they tend to employ what the west would consider an excess of staff but which they consider assets.
In fact, companies that treat workers the way many western companies do, especially US companies in at-will states, are called "black companies" in Japan. They are regarded as basically scams, get-rich-quick schemes for their owners that you would avoid working for.
That all works for the Japanese because they are Japanese with a Japanese culture and society which are radically different than most other Western nations. It's the same sort of disconnect when comparing socialist Norwegian nation's economies, healthcare systems, etc, to the US. Totally different societies and cultures. Apples & oranges.
Strat
Re: Success as cost of goods is not good economics (Score:2)
You can have lots of low cost products available, and yet no one can afford to purchase them because no one has the money to spare - employment is so low that no disposable cash drives the economy.
I guess that's why unemployment in the USA is at 4% while in France it's 9%. Because the French are WAY more obsessed with eliminating workers to maximise profits. The USA is a socialist paradise in comparison.
It's about time (Score:2, Funny)
Now maybe we can get back to mining coal.
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Insolation.gif
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You expect anyone to believe the very last time you called someone a name was in third grade? I think we can add "Big Fat Lying Liar Pants" to the list.
Not the first administration to take action. (Score:5, Informative)
The Obama administration also accused China of cheating on solar panels [latimes.com] via government subsidies; and tariffs were tacked on as punishment. As I understand it, the World Trade Organization agreed that China cheated, but disagreed with the US's remedy.
While I cannot stand Trump in general, he is sometimes right about trade and visa workers. Just because you are an idiot does not mean you are always wrong. Go 15% of Trump!
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I'm kind of paraphrasing, but I also recall a list on this site, that Trump may introduce policies that foreign worker visas must be over a certain high wage, ensuring that Americans don't import foreign workers (mainly India) yet pay them peanuts, ensuring that local work is available to Americans.
A sound policy to be honest, I wish my government would do it
Remember the 59% Chinese tariff already in effect. (Score:5, Interesting)
It applies to US produced polysilicon shipped over there.
The Chinese want a monopoly on PV panels and the entire supply chain, and to that end anything goes. Daqo gets free electricity for one example.
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The whole country is pulling on one rope. It's over the top, of course, but they use the advantages of teamwork, aka being social. With a 1984 vibe.
Meanwhile, the US has a lizard culture, where it's everyone for himself, and business basically is about who stabs others in the back and takes their things the best. Also with a 1984 vibe, but on the side.
I'm no fan of either, but teamwork literally made humanity great (among other things like hands, big brains, etc), and superior to anti-social lifeforms. This is still just as true as it always was.
So they're Grays, and we're Reptilians? Fascinating.
Tesla gets a Trump card (Score:2)
Elon Musk must be happy with this news.
This can't be a bad thing for Tesla who isn't exactly doing it for the coal diggers who backed Trump.
Solar Roof is made at Telsa's Buffalo Gigafactory isn't it?
Solyndra (Score:2)
Would an import tariff like this have saved Solyndra, or was the company just a shell for political contributions.
Re: Solyndra (Score:5, Interesting)
Solyndra was simply a textbook horrible business plan from beginning to end:
Built fragile, complex solar panels, in a heavily automated factory, on some of the most expensive land inte world, paying some of the highest wages and taxes, that sold at a premium that way exceeded the slight performance boost their curved design provided over plain, flat Chinese imports.
Their plan was so obviously horrible that when they applied for a half-billion dollars the analysts could predict, to the month, when Solyndra would go bankrupt - so they denied their federally-secured loan application.
Then the company 'liberally' donated to President Obama's campaign, theirloan application was approved, and then, as if by magic, Solyndra went bankrupt EXACTLY when the previous administration's analysts predicted!
Amazing!
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Grants. We call those grants. If it was sold to the US people as a "loan program" when it didn't expect to get the money back, that.... could be fraud. The government trying to get into the "venture capitalist" business where they give out tax money to risky ventures would be so ripe for corruption it's an obviously bad idea. You can't trust people to make bets with other people's money.
I'd fully support R&D grants to help solar technology and engineering. Like this guy. He looks cool. I'm do [energy.gov]
More people affected by washing machine tariff? (Score:2)
Why isn't the headline... (Score:3)
And where is the information about the already existing 150 tariffs that these two are going to be added to? Ah... it would spin quite as well that way now would it when we're looking at the actual facts. If we admitted there are already 150 existing tariffs and it hasn't completely flipped trade upside down, we couldn't as easily make it appear as though two additional tariffs would completely destabilize free trade with FUD.
Re:Remember kids: Tarrifs and subsidies are evil! (Score:5, Insightful)
Us lefties didn't particularily like Obama either (Score:3)
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No Trump fan, here,
but the Trump derangement is sad,
"so sad".. ya doesn't sound even a bit like a Trump supporter
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Fuck that. It's a boon to the oil and coal industry. Solar panels just went up by 30%, slowing down our energy independence. We could have moved so much more energy production on-shore. Who cares where manufacturing happens except the manufacturers? Are we going to impose the same 30% tariff on imported coal-mining equipment?
Fuck that.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about American solar panel manufacturers? God forbid the Chinese have the same worker and environmental protections as the US to increase their costs of production. But it's easy to claim moral superiority on the climate when you export your pollution to cheap Chinese labor and unregulated industry.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What about American solar panel manufacturers?
This ensures that American solar panel manufacturers will be shielded from competition, face no pressure to innovate, and fall even further behind in the world market.
Just more corporate welfare, at the expense of American families, and one more field where America has given up even trying to lead. So much for MAGA.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
So how does that view fit in with the fact that the tariffs will reduce to elimination over the next 4 years?
Sounds to me that it's an opportunity for american manufacturing to get their feet before competition resumes, and nothing else.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So how does that view fit in with the fact that the tariffs will reduce to elimination over the next 4 years?
Because once corporate welfare is in place, it becomes politically impossible to remove it. The companies receiving the subsidies will have more money for lobbying, while the (far more numerous) companies hurt by the tariffs will have less to spend or will go out of business.
Sounds to me that it's an opportunity for american manufacturing to get their feet before competition resumes, and nothing else.
This is the classical justification for protectionism: That it is only "temporary" while we "learn to compete". But that never works because companies don't become stronger by being coddled.
Re: Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:3)
The companies receiving the subsidies will have more money for lobbying, while the (far more numerous) companies hurt by the tariffs will have less to spend or will go out of business.
Subsidies? Tarrifs aren't distributed to domestic manufacturers, they are taxes, added to the federal budget.
You knew that, right? Seriously - you didn't think that the gov't collects tarrifs on imports and distributes the money to US manufacturers, did you?
Re: Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Subsidies? Tarrifs aren't distributed to domestic manufacturers, they are taxes, added to the federal budget.
Wrong. These are protective tariffs. They are being put in place to make imports prohibitively expensive, so few if any will be imported. So no "tax" will be collected. This allows domestic manufacturers to raise prices beyond the market price.
So the net effect is:
1. People are required by law to pay more for solar panels.
2. This extra money goes to corporations that did nothing to earn it.
This is corporate welfare, pure and simple. Corporate welfare is stupid when it is used for something like ethanol subsidies, which at least in principle are an improvement over burning fossil fuels. But this is EVEN STUPIDER since it will DISCOURAGE solar installations, and result in more FFs being burned.
I can't believe anyone with a brain thinks this is a good idea. In the short run we spend more on fossil fuels. In the long run, we make our solar industry even more uncompetitive.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Has there ever been a corporate or citizen's welfare program that has not been dropped as soon as the political tides turn in the US
Absolutely. Oil subsidies and tax breaks have persisted for decades through Democratic and Republican administrations. Same for tobacco subsidies, sugar subsidies, corn ethanol subsidies, etc. The mohair subsidy persisted for more than 70 years after it became completely pointless in 1945. The carried interest tax break for investment bankers famously just survived in Trump's big tax reform, despite his repeated promises during the campaign to eliminate it.
I could go on, and on, and on.
It is much harder to find the opposite: An example of corporate welfare that was actually ended.
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I do see a potential mixed bag:
a) The tariffs aren't in play, and Americans/others see this as a challenge to create a cheaper pv technology, likely by creating a better way to more cheaply produce existing pv technology.
b) The tariffs are in play, and the resulting higher prices in the marketplace provide an economic incentive to us to develop a significantly different, better pv technology.
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Depends on the tariff.
How?
Was the tariff put in place on a level playing field, or one in which a nation was subsidizing their industry in order to dominate it?
The field is never level. China is better at manufacturing panels than the US, in part at least, because they were quicker to realise that Climate change wasn't a time travelling zombie conspiracy. And in part because because they are better at manufacturing in general. You can bemoan the reasons why, or you can try to be competitive, or you can find industries where you are better than the Chinese, and encourage those.
As for subsidies, that's kinda the point. Had the US subsidised the manufacturing
If it's OK there, Why not here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just ask yourself a Question.
Could you build a plant, and operate it here following the same environmental and safety regulations used in China?
The answer is obviously no. Why? Because those working conditions and environmental practices would be condemned as immoral and an affront to the environment.
So, why then do people seem to think it suddenly becomes moral and OK to have those conditions in a place 3,000 miles away? If it's Not OK here, then it's not OK there. Or, visa versa. If it's good enough for the Chinese, then it's good enough for Jersey.
People may think it's good to have cheap solar cells, but unless you can make them cheap in a way that squares with the rhetoric of the labor and environmental movements, then cheap solar cells are not viable.
Interestingly, saying that they should make these in those conditions in a foreign land seems to actually be racists.
Re: If it's OK there, Why not here? (Score:2)
Can't even begin to imagine the working conditions and wages us manufacturers would have to employ to compete with slave labor and zero environmental concerns as in China... but hey, if Trump does it, it must be bad!
Re:If it's OK there, Why not here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, and a lot of us would have felt very differently if it were a tariff on imports from businesses who don't meet our standards for social or environmental responsibility.
However that's not what this is. You can still run a textile plant in China and dump your dye-laded waste water directly into a river with no treatment; you can have people exposed to repetitive stress injury building phone parts; you can have people working in metal stamping facilities where a wrong move could cost them one of their limbs.
This is a direct targeted attack on sustainable energy.
Sure, but why pick on Solar Panels? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: If it's OK there, Why not here? (Score:3)
The irony is that a good number of cases comparative working conditions arenâ(TM)t really possible. This is because for a manufacturing process that provides work to apparently cheap labor in a China then it is often just done by robots in the US. Now we have the question of which is worse: mediocre working conditions or no job at all? - Neither are great options. If you want good working conditions and jobs it sometimes means driving the cost of the end product, though there are other cases where top
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Re:If it's OK there, Why not here? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No. It ensures Chinese solar panel manufacturers can't get away with being subsidized by the government so they can sell below cost and drive the competition out of business.
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The legal justification for a tariff under our treaty obligations is that the foreign competition is unfairly subsidized. In that is *true* then American company innovation *might* also be retarded by making payback times too long to justify investments.
The political argument is that this will be good for US workers, but that's an open question. If the solar installation industry collapses, that would be bad for workers doing that, and it might even be bad for US solar manufacturers who need those guys t
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As it is, it’s not clear what difference this will make. Sure, buyers in the US May purchase less Chinese panels. Or they might just buy them because even with the tariff, they are still cheaper than US made options, and spend less on other goods. Or they might buy Japanese, or Vietnamese, or Taiwane
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"What American solar manufacturers?"
Solyndra. Oh, never mind.
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Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I care where the manufacturing happens. The Chinese are very far behind on their environmental regulations, not mention worker rights. Also this move will help our energy independence than hinder it. We we just keep importing cheap panels from China we become dependent on them. This will make domestic panels more cost effective and actually speed up our energy independence.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Otherwise, if Chinese manufacturers can produce panels more efficiently than U.S. manufacturers, its in our best interest to import panels and focus our efforts to areas where we're more efficient. Being able to manufacture solar panels has nowhere near the impact on energy independence as does producing ones own fossil fuels. Existing panels don't suddenly stop working if we stop trading with China.
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
China has a habit of doing just that. Subsidizing their industries and dumping cheap products on the world at the expense of other economies. The have done this in the past with cheap steel. Make no mistake, the Chinese are purely looking after Chinese interest. I, personally can't find any fault with this logic.
There is a difference between efficiently produced panels and cheap panels. Cheap panels will have a shorter lifespan than say more quality produced panels. So to replace a cheaper panels as they wear out will require the manufacturing of more panels. Solar panels are not with out a environmental cost, that is most evident in the manufacturing phase.
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Tariffs only make sense if the Chinese government is subsidizing their solar panel manufacturing
They are. By allowing the environment to be screwed up and treating their workers like replaceable tools they have an effective subsidy over USA manufacturers. You can use cute words like "efficient" to describe it as much as you want but the reality is that the USA holds itself to certain standards and by not imposing tariffs on goods not imported to those standards the government policies effectively drive production offshore.
The only question is: Why are you limiting this to solar panels? Maybe if we got
Re:Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you expect protected American companies to be able to compete on the world stage you are delusional at best. American companies have risen to the competition in the past and were in the process of doing so before this happened. Now we have an artificially created short supply on panels. I don't see this helping anyone, especially America
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A few years ago we tried boot-strapping solar panels in the US. It turned out to be a bust because we couldn't compete with China on costs.
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hundreds of orders of magnitude
I don't think that phrase means what you think it means.
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This will simply move assembly here and provide a few jobs tending assembly machines on the line. No real bump for the workers in the USA.
That's nothing new.
In an effort to avoid counterfeit or inferior quality material, many American companies (especially in the energy sector) stipulate in their RFQs and POs that material can only be sourced from a specified list of countries.
American suppliers circumvent this by sourcing the same material from the same chinese vendors that they (we) always have, then assembling them in the US, and stamping "Made in the US" on them. The actual law is intricate, but you can read a summary here. https://en.w [wikipedia.org]
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This will simply move assembly here and provide a few jobs tending assembly machines on the line
You talk like this is a bad thing. Any jobs this bring home is a good thing in my option. It is also a good thing if they are made here instead of in China. At least for now the environmental and worker regulations are are better than they are in China.
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You really think that? That is absolutely, stunning. If low skilled manufacturing jobs are useless, then why is China have so many? No job is useless or worthless, and low skilled manufacturing jobs are all some people are qualified for.
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Well...the young US solar panel industry and the domestic workers they employ.
Domestic manufacturing *IS* a good thing and we need to work to keep as much of it as we can, we've lost waaaaay too much over the past few decades.
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Domestic manufacturing of solar panels creates basically no jobs.
However there is a certain level of know how necessary to run a plant, so keeping some plants running make of course sense.
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Though the solar tax credit is still (currently) alive for a few more years. 30% of all costs.
It really doesn't "make sense" for me to get solar financially since I have a city owned power company with low power costs and I use relatively little power.. I still may eventually do it, for environmental reasons (in the long long long run).
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... slowing down our energy independence ...
In Republican speak, "energy independence" is code for fossil-fuel companies and them doing whatever they want - like pollute rivers, etc...
More seriously, complaints about this are over-blown. From United States energy independence [wikipedia.org]
In total energy consumption, the U.S. was between 86% and 91% self-sufficient in 2016. In May 2011, the country became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. As of 2014, the United States was the world's third-largest producer of crude oil, after Saudi Arabia and Russia and second largest exporter of refined products, after Russia.
Note the phrase, "net exporter of refined petroleum products."
Re: Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:2)
Note the phrase, "net exporter of refined petroleum products."
Because it's illegal to export US crude oil.
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Note the phrase, "net exporter of refined petroleum products."
Because it's illegal to export US crude oil.
If true, I didn't know that, but why would you want to rather than refined products?
[ Ignoring that I was modded "troll"... ]
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Happened in Europe in the past as well. Some fuckwit Belgian politican just showing how much bullshit caring for the environment is to the politicians.
Re: Hail trump!!!! USA USA USA!!!! (Score:2)
Who cares where manufacturing happens except the manufacturers?
Only anyone who's studied history.
You need to do some shopping. (Score:2)
I need 5 to 10kwh of installed panel this year. I buy 100w panels due to shipping costs. they are 125$
I assume you mean 5 to 10 kW of panels. Or do you mean about 1/5 that to make 5 to 10 kWh per day, or about 5 times that to average 5 to 10 kW 24/7? (That's figuring 5 solar hours as a rule-of-thumb for a good site in the mid-latitude continental US.)
That's very expensive. Panels (new, UL approved, in 10-panel pallets) were going for $0.33 per watt last year. Maybe they weren't 100W panels, but shippin
Re: fk... (Score:2)
Suck it up, buttercup.
Your idea of energy independence and saving the planet relies on solar panels built in inhumane factories by laborers earning slave wages, polluting the environment and then put on a cargo ship, shipped halfway across the planet, put on a train and delivered to your city. So far, your good with all that, but you draw the line at paying $165 for the solar panel?
You could buy a US made panel for slightly less, and satisfy yourself that the workers were likely paid a living wage, that the
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True... (Score:2)
Cost of a PV system was in the "balance of system" since 2012. [greentechmedia.com]
And the price of a PV system will continue to drop [futurism.com] at almost the same level as the tariff - 4.4% per year.
So the tariff will be meaningless in half the time.
Also... It's pretty much obvious from the graph on the link above that even with that 30% hike on Chinese solar panels - they will still be cheaper than the ones Made in USA.
Aaaand... that India is making China look like USA with their prices - 65 cents per watt.
On top of all that... If anyth
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Trump can't seriously think
Correct.