US Puts Tariff On Chinese Solar Panels 311
retroworks writes "Two stories in Digitimes make a puzzle of economic policy. U.S. and European tax incentives and stimulus increase steady demand for solar panels. The Chinese government subsidizes production of solar panels to meet this growing demand. The U.S. and EU complain, and place tariffs on Chinese solar panels. Do allegations that China has used government funding to subsidize the production trump our desire for cheaper solar power? Subsidizing demand led to subsidized production. In other words, one market interference (subsidized demand for solar) leads to its counterpoint, government tariff and taxation of the same product."
well... (Score:4, Interesting)
A (rare) moment of US/EU strategic and economic briliance?
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A (rare) moment of US/EU strategic and economic briliance?
I'm not sure if it's brilliance, or just the opening salvo of another Smoot-Hawley [wikipedia.org], leading to a bad feedback loop. I don't know. Given the current economic situation in the US, I think it merits continued observation.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
One government intervention in the market usually fails, which then leads to another intervention, which then fails, which then leads to another intervention... and so on. Wouldn't it be nice to have one of these laws/regulations come with a measurable goal and be automatically repealed if it didn't meet it?
Speaking of wishful thinking...
We have subsidies to buyers, then subsidies to suppliers, then loan guarantees to risky manufacturers, then tariffs on imports... what's next, skip it all with an individual mandate that all Americans purchase solar panels for their home, but only from certified U.S. union-run companies?
It would be cheaper and less economically destructive if the government just gave a few billion directly to the bank accounts of their special interest buddies instead of distorting the Catallaxy [wikipedia.org] with this farce.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Congress can mandate you MUST buy a product (insurance), then they also have the power to mandate you buy other products. Like the solar panels you describe.
Or hybrid cars. ......
Or LED bulbs.
Or thermostats controllable by your electric monopoly.
Or PCs that enable at-home voting (note: the application only works on Windows 7/8. Sorry.).
Or
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Or thermostats controllable by your electric monopoly.
In fact, that was proposed in the netherlands. The proposed bill suggested that refusing to have a "smart" meter installed could get you 6 months of prison AND a fine of up to € 17.000 (± $22.500). Luckily this bill didn't pass.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
If by "rare" your mean "not well done", then yes, I agree.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Brilliance" would be INTELLIGENT government support for our domestic industries, but our government and people are incompetent to do that, so "tariffs" it is.
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I can't see why we'd mind if the Chinese government pissed away a few billion dollars of their money.
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I can't see why we'd mind if the Chinese government pissed away a few billion dollars of our money.
FTFW
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how the Chinese government's money is somehow our money. Even if it was our money before we paid it to them, it's their money now.
I think what this is really doing is clarifying why we subsidize solar panels -- they're making clear that it's a jobs program, not an environmental program. If it was an environmental program then we would be happy. China is adding to our subsidy and making solar panels even more attractive: Now they will be even less expensive and even more people will use them.
But if it's a jobs program then it's a disaster. The point of the demand-side subsidy is then to increase demand and create more jobs making solar panels. And subsidizing supply in China means that the increased demand gets met by supply from China instead of supply from domestic industry. Worse yet (for jobs), the dual subsidy makes foreign solar panels extraordinarily competitive and displaces demand for non-solar domestic competitors like oil and gas.
Or to put it more simply: It makes it very attractive to replace domestic fossil fuel energy with foreign made solar panels. If you like solar panels, that's good. If you like domestic jobs, that's bad.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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You are forgetting about the pollution friend.
I'm not sure what that has to do with the subsidies. First world countries could easily pass a law prohibiting the import of solar panels not manufactured under first world environmental standards, but that wouldn't solve the "problem" of the Chinese making solar panels under subsidy and thereby undercutting first world competitors.
It really doesn't help to lower usage of fossil fuels if the way they are being made is environmentally unsustainable, all we are doing is buying a little time at the expense of land that will be uninhabitable. Considering the size of the Chinese military making more of their land unusable is probably be a BAD idea.
I would expect a civil war more than anything. Annexing more land is pretty useless because it's not like you can actually relocate the people to it cost-effectively, and besides
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop thinking in terms of money.
First, China is not "wasting" our money, as USD is not legal tender there. In order to provide subsidies to local manufacturers, they do it with their own money, of which they have an unlimited amount, just as the USG has an unlimited amount of its own scrip. We do not live in a gold standard world in which china can obtain a gold coin from the U.S., ship that coin across the ocean, and then pay that coin to a local firm in exchange for domestically made goods. All net trade income received by China must be immediately re-invested in the purchase of U.S. assets (bonds), and the forex rates adjust to ensure that this always happens. It is not a choice, but a mathematical fact that the current account plus the capital account sum to zero. There is no "extra" trade income that can be used to purchase chinese goods.
More importantly, the real wealth of a nation is not measured by how much scrip a government is able to tax away. That would be silly, as government first issues the scrip and then passes laws to tax it back. That's not a measure of wealth. Real wealth is a nation's productivity. That means both quantity and quality of output that can be produced per unit of effort. The Chinese recognize this and are trying to improve their own capital stock.They are trying to build real wealth. If a byproduct is the erosion of productive capacity in the U.S., then this means the U.S. becomes poorer. But not by design, and not as a requirement, it's a just a by-product due to the interplay between financial profits and real wealth. Note that we are not talking about money -- I'm sure U.S. firms can earn large profits if they are given very cheap inputs, at least in financial terms. But if our real productivity capacity is diminished as a result, then we as a nation *do* become poorer.
In a for-profit world, investors invest in those things that earn a return, independently of whether this investment is beneficial to the nation as a whole or succeeds in increasing productivity. See, for example, our wonderful financial system. So the Chinese government, if it believes that it needs to acquire capital in some industry, waves its hands and makes investing in that industry more profitable (in terms of money) for its own people. It's able to do this because, as has already been mentioned, the Chinese government has an unlimited supply of its own scrip to spend, as do all governments that use fiat currencies.
Whether this move actually pays off for China or not is questionable. If you are a market-zealot, then you believe that any government interference will cause misallocation of resources and China would be even more productive without it. But China seems to have a track record of achieving rapid economic growth by intervening in industries and subsidizing the ones it believes will lead to the highest productivity gains. And not only China, but many nations follow this model. Nations with "hands off" governments tend not to have clean drinking water, universities, or a developed economy. Of course, that doesn't mean that every intervention is good. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. The real world track record doesn't cleanly support one political philosophy over another.
In either case, whether or not the Chinese succeed in making themselves more productive by printing up their own money and giving it to politically favored entrepreneurs, this is an experiment that is not happening with "our" money, but with their money and their own economy. The problem arises when it spills over to the U.S. (or EU) economy. In that case, there is nothing wrong with the U.S. government raising the costs of doing business for the same Chinese entrepreneurs who had their own costs lowered by their own government. And with a billion people, you would think that China would be able to develop domestic industries without selling into the U.S. market. After all, there is also some need for energy in China. So ask yourself why do they need to sell to America? It is not because "w
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Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
Because that's exactly what they did with the mining industry and rare earths? The US was, at one point, the largest supplier in the world of rare earths. You didn't dig them all up, they're still there in the ground, though today there's almost no rare earth production in the US.
What happened? China flooded the market with low cost minerals whose production was effectively subsidized by the significantly less stringent environmental controls, and US-based business couldn't keep up. And of course now that there's no rare earth production outside of China, they've started hoarding it and are interfering with and manipulating the world market.
In other words... China may be taking a loss right now, but will they still be 5 years from now?
Re:well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably dealing with labor strikes. Or else being cut-off from the rest of the world for abusing their workers (sanctions). QUOTE: "When Jobs decided just a month before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic screen with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers when the glass screens arrived at midnight....."
How would YOU feel if you just went to bed at 9 or 10, and then suddenly your bosses wake you up at midnight to work another 12 hour shift? This is noting more than human abuse.
No wonder these people are jumping off roofs. They are sick-and-tired of being sick and tired.
Re:well... (Score:4, Interesting)
The average suicide rate in Foxconn is lower than the average on all US states.
Re:well... (Score:4, Interesting)
You should take into consideration that most depressive individuals will not jump of the factory roof; they rather kill themselves at home, and since suicide is a social stigma, some die in an "accident" or "intoxication", with only the authorities and immediate family knowing the real cause. Because of the high publicity of the suicides, you can also expect Foxconn to preemptively fire any employee showing signs of depression - no potential for another "Foxconn suicide". We are likely seeing only the top of the iceberg.
The median age of Foxconn factory workers is very young, while most of the clinical depression cases hit the elderly. Social isolation and joblessness (or retirement) are important triggers for depression. So you are not comparing Apple to apples when comparing the young active Foxconn employees to the average person in the US. How high is the suicide rate among young Apple or Ford employees in the US ?
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
How would YOU feel if you just went to bed at 9 or 10, and then suddenly your bosses wake you up at midnight to work another 12 hour shift?
If I was a typical Foxconn employee, I would probably feel happy about it. When Foxconn employees were asked what they would like to see changed in their workplace, their number one request was LONGER shifts. Most rural Chinese marry young, have their only child, and then one parent often heads off to the city to earn extra money while the grandparents help raise the baby. Since the father can do heavier labor, he is more useful on the farm, so it is the mother who leaves for the factory job. These women are not interested in more leisure time. They want to go home to their families. So the more extra hours they can work, the faster that day will come.
The typical Foxconn employee is not you, and does not share your lifestyle and motivations. So stop trying to project your values onto them.
No wonder these people are jumping off roofs.
Foxconn's suicide rate is lower than the average rate in China.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Foxconn's suicide rate is lower than the average rate in China.
Great soundbite, but very misleading. Foxconn workers are young, healthy, employed, and lack mental illness. All of those factors reduce their probability of committing suicide as compared to the general population. You need to compare their suicide rate to members of a similar demographic.
Furthermore, Foxconn is by all accounts one of the best employers. There are a lot of other manufacturers in China that are much worse. People just focus on Foxconn because it's the biggest, but the problem is pervasive throughout the industry.
When Foxconn employees were asked what they would like to see changed in their workplace, their number one request was LONGER shifts....The typical Foxconn employee is not you, and does not share your lifestyle and motivations. So stop trying to project your values onto them.
This attitude is exactly what lets corporations abuse people on such a horrifying scale. People are desperate to work, because they must work to survive, and so they say "I'll take the abuse, just please let me earn enough to live!" And the company abuses them, uses them up, until they can't take it anymore, and then grabs the next desperate person out of line.
Pressure from the western world has caused Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturers to raise wages for their employees. That's a good thing. The fact that rural Chinese villagers are in such dire straits that they'd take the job even without the raise doesn't mean we should just let them suffer. Either we can enrich the robber barons by racing to the bottom, or we can try to raise average quality of life around the globe. Most people would prefer the latter.
Re:well... (Score:5, Informative)
Pressure from the western world has caused Foxconn and other Chinese manufacturers to raise wages for their employees.
Not true. Foxconn couldn't care less what the "western world" thinks. They raised wages because too many of their employees where quiting.
Let me explain how things work in China: You are paid a monthly wage, plus a rather substantial bonus, which is almost always paid right before the lunar new year, when the factory shuts down for the holiday. So if you are thinking of quitting, it usually makes sense to wait for your bonus, go home for the holiday, and then just not come back. This happens every year. But this year many more people didn't come back. Most of this was because of strong economic growth in inland areas, so people can find good job opportunities close to home. These jobs typically don't pay as well as Foxconn, but people can work without being separated from their families.
Foxconn, and other large employers, all raised wages just a few weeks after the lunar new year, to lure these people back.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is interesting that these same arguments (Chinese workers at Foxcon are better off) were used to justify slavery in the US for many years before the Civil War.
Abuse of rights is abuse of rights.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Foxconn employees are free to quit and go home anytime they want. They are working for Foxconn because they, not you, have decided it is their best opportunity.
Calling them "slaves" is absurd.
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn, that's pretty much Embrace, Extend, Extinguish but with entire global markets. It's like Microsoft is running a country. *shudder*
Oil dumping is the real problem (Score:3, Interesting)
The U.S. applied these "anti dumping" tariffs on Chinese solar panels on the same day Saudi Arabia announced plans for a massive dump of oil to drive down prices. [greenprophet.com] Isn't it obvious that Mideast oil dumps have done far more harm to U.S. alternative energy industry, including solar, than a handful of fledgling Chinese photovoltaic companies ever did?
With the exception of a few wildcat oil well companies in the late 90s, the U.S. has never complained of mideast oil dumping. And the U.S. actually complains w
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
NEVER is too strong a word. Government intervention can be beneficial in some cases - though it requires a government being smart enough to make the right choices which is extremely unlikely in a world of billions being spent on lobbying each year.
The Pacific Railroad would be one example of a government subsidy that was most likely a net benefit (of course it's impossible to actually measure since you can't run a control world without it).
And of course there are non-economic factors as well. Sometimes you might want to subsidise a local industry at economic cost in order to have something of strategic importance.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Five years from now, they will have a lot less money, and when they try to jack up the prices, we will be competitive again. Actually moreso, because we are doing most of the cutting edge research, and we won't have wasted capital resources on now outdated cell production processes. In the meantime, we can invest our capital in industries where they DON'T subsidize, and take over that market.
Government intervention in markets is NEVER productive. When you give +100 in subsidies to a particular industry, you must take a total of -120, -140, or even -200 from other industries. This does NOTHING except make their economy weaker.
That's...totally wrong.
Your argument only works if the subsidized and non-subsidized industries are roughly equal in economic size, so that the amount of benefit the subsidized industries get is offset by the amount of loss the unsubsidized industries pay in taxes to fund the subsidies. But that isn't what happens: What they're doing is divide and conquer. You pick some minority of industries, especially the ones that are expected to grow in the future, and you subsidize them heavily to drive competitors in other countries out of business. Once you own the market, you can cancel the subsidies and your country will still own the market because it now has all the know-how, infrastructure and already-amortized fixed costs that competitors lack. Then you can transfer the subsidy to the next growth industry. At the same time, the subsidy is a small portion of the overall existing economy and comes from a broad tax base, so the drag it creates on non-subsidized businesses is extremely minor and doesn't create a major competitive disadvantage.
In addition to that, it is easy for them to impose the tax tax on industries where they already have a competitive advantage (e.g. cheap labor costs), such that the amount of the tax doesn't even erode their entire advantage in those industries, meaning that they still out-compete other countries in those fields even after paying a small, broad-based tax to fund a large, narrowly targeted subsidy.
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It's almost like someone in China read Das Kapital and figured out that they could make their entire country act like Standard Oil.
Re:well... (Score:4, Informative)
"Five years from now, they will have a lot less money, and when they try to jack up the prices, we will be competitive again."
Except that it takes three to five years to build the factory, so they have a window of opportunity to gouge while you ramp up.
By way of example, they are trying to restart RE production at the mine in CA. It should be going again in a couple more years.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government intervention in markets is NEVER productive.
You mean like in the 1940's when the government literally told private manufacturers what to make? And subsequently lifted us out of the depression? oh right...defense spending isn't intervention in the markets...it's just 'good'.
Government intervention in the markets is absolutely necessary...to a point. The lack of government intervention led to the great Depression and our most recent Recession. Completely unregulated markets will crash - regularly and routinely. Laws and regulations exist for a reason...
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Because you don't own stock in, or work for, a domestic solar cell manufacturer. This industry could end up being enormous, and that means a lot of money and jobs are at stake.
There's another problem, too. If the US government doesn't do anything when the Chinese government prices US manufacturers out of business, it sends a signal to potential solar cell investors and manufacturers, and that is there isn't any way to make money manufacturing solar cells in the US. I'm not going to get funding to bring
Re:well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chinese intervention in their own markets will either give us manufactured goods for cheaper than we could make them, or give our industry the incentive to make the shit ourselves. But when OUR government starts intervening (and continues its current intervention), then we suffer just the same as the Chinese, and everyone except for the governments of both nations lose.
Re:Tail wags dog (Score:4)
Sarcasm noted. However, amost anyone who knows anything about Economics knows that the idea of tariff is a bad idea. Cure your ignorance: Read "Spin-free Economics" by Behravesh or any other good basic Economics book.
Re:Tail wags dog (Score:4, Insightful)
Subsidies are usually a bad idea, too. In this case, however, two wrongs (Chinese subsidies & US tariffs) might make a right.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget about the numerous successful security breaches and attempts by the Chinese to get solar cell secrets before China opened the floodgates on solar cells made cheaper than material cost.
Pure and simple -- this was an aggressive act to put a US industry six feet under, and because there was partisan politics involved, Congress sat on their hands until the US industry got turfed.
Will these measures be too little too late, time will tell. However, do we want another industry that is permanently tied to China, like steel making, consumer devices, chip making, and many others. If we have no solar industry, China gains a strategic advantage of being able to not be as dependent on oil while Western interests go into the black hole called the Middle East. We already reached peak oil and peak coal; it is only going to get more expensive from here.
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China has a large portion of our debt. By them pissing away their money, they are actually pissing away our money.
The irony being, we have to pay them for them keeping businesses,jobs, profits away from us.
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By them pissing away their money, they are actually pissing away our money.
Which was their money not ours. The lending activity doesn't change that.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the Chinese perspective, a few billion to destroy local American industry and establish future dependence probably seems pretty cheap.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that unions and government regulations are pushing jobs overseas presupposes that it's both possible and desirable to have the most abused workforce and environment in the world.
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I've said it before, I'm saying it again: When a company offshores operations, they should be required to follow their home nation's environmental and labour laws as WELL as those of the foreign country.
A nice thought, but how could you enforce such a law? I don't think the Chinese would appreciate having the EPA snooping around all their factories.
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A nice thought, but how could you enforce such a law? I don't think the Chinese would appreciate having the EPA snooping around all their factories.
You can't sell or import anything into the US unless you can prove that it complied with all labor and environmental regulations. It won't happen, but is perfectly possible.
Re:well... (Score:4, Informative)
Unions and environmental regulations do not destroy markets. They ensure that people actually pay.
Without environmental regulation, every company in the US would be able to say "fuck it, I'll just dump this poison in the water supply, then I don't have to spend a dime dealing with it". It externalizes costs of production and forces everyone else to either pay for dealing with the problem or in some cases get fucked over because there is no effective way to deal with a problem once its already happened. Environmental regulations do not increase cost, they prevent the externalization of cost. This was how the US was a hundred years ago, and it is only through environmental regulation that it has changed.
A similar argument goes for unions. Why care about workers hours, pay, safety conditions, even survival if you can abuse them for less and they don't have the power to negotiate for their own survival? This was how the US was a hundred years ago, and it is only through the effort of unions that it has changed.
A lack of environmental regulation and unions perverts the free market by allowing certain players to force others into unequal commitments for their own profit and externalizing the damage and costs of their operations.
I'll add (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone can't work for minimum wage and America survive. This is not to knock minimum wage jobs, but everyone can't work at Wal-Mart and McDonalds. When you make minimum wage, you spend it all on housing/rent, gas, and food. There is no money left over for anything else. If you have a consumer-based economy, and nobody has any money to spend, what is going to happen to your economy.
We can't send all the real jobs overseas and expect everyone here to work at a shop in the mall. Who are you going to sell stuff to?
If we don't bring real, productive jobs back to America, we have had it. We can't rely on IP, intangibles, copyright lawsuits, and royalties to keep us afloat. It's real jobs, producing real products, or we have had it.
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dufus. natural gas production goes hand in hand with oil production. The US is sitting on huge reserves and letting itself ger economically mauled for not developing it. Wait till you get to buy gas once a week in a line because of rationing. We just one misille launch in the middle east away from that.
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I think the problem is that the American solar companies have bri....er....donated so much money to American lawmakers that they don't think they have to tolerate subsidized competition. Of course they see our subsidizing as being an investment.
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There, now you went and said it.
Let me see if I get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
The US gives money to people who buy solar panels, while adding an import tariff on the same solar panels that will be tacked on to the end user price. What was the point of the exercise?
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Also, the government does not tax oil imports, so the tax differential appears to reflect an implicit government preference that we use import oil rather than solar panels, in cases where they can be interchanged.
Re:Let me see if I get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
The US gives money to people who buy solar panels, while adding an import tariff on the same solar panels that will be tacked on to the end user price. What was the point of the exercise?
These are inherently different things; the subsidies to buy solar panels only affects demand, but subsidising production creates an uneven playing field for those selling solar panels. There is also less incentive to create better and more affordable products if someone is just throwing money at you to keep production running. Everyone here of course understands this, but I'm guessing it's republican day at slantdot.
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And what's wrong with China subsidizing panels? WE subsidize our products (hybrid cars, corn, sugar, banks, mortgage companies, solar companies like Solyndra, etc) . So it's wrong when China does it, but okay when the EU/US do it? Hypocrites.
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Just because the Chinese government subsidizes their "solar panels" does not mean that the US has to as well(AKA no tarriffs).
you did not get it straight. (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's wrong with China subsidizing panels? WE subsidize our products (hybrid cars, corn, sugar, banks, mortgage companies, solar companies like Solyndra, etc) . So it's wrong when China does it, but okay when the EU/US do it? Hypocrites.
Nothing is WRONG with a govt subsidizing an industry per se. But the appropriate response is to apply tarrifs.
If you subsidize an industry this may make sense inside the country where the subsidies reside. There it is a level playing field because all companies have access. It may be good for the country because they want to build up that industry and overcome an economic hump, meet a national strategy like oil security, create employment, or just to satisty internal political harmony.
But when you sell the products internationally it hurts companies outside. The remedy is tarrifs.
Other countries should fee free to (and do) apply tarrifs to goods from outside that harm domestic industry.
There's no Hypocrisy at all. It's exactly the right thing to do. However 5% is too low.
The only reason this does not happen more is that tarrifs can launch a cycle of retribution when thought punitive. It's easier to let it slide usually. The places you care about dumping are in rapidly growing industries. There the early mover advantage can be too big to ignore.
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I suspect that was a rhetorical question. But for anyone who may be wondering, this is part of a complicated shell game our government plays with money in order to distract our attention away from what it is really doing.
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The government does this crap all the time. They hand-out Social security checks, and then they tax them. So they hand-out money and then they take it back, thus creating bureaucratic waste (and white collar welfare for workers reviewing Retired folks tax returns). It would be more logical for the government to just not tax the SS checks and eliminate that waste.
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The point is simple (Score:5, Insightful)
The US gives money to people who buy solar panels, while adding an import tariff on the same solar panels that will be tacked on to the end user price. What was the point of the exercise?
The point is plainly obvious: Equalize the manufacturing playfield. Solar panel production is not a static industry. It is a growth industry.
Subsidizing production in one nation hurts development of the industry in another. In contract, subsidizing use in one country helps production in all countries.
However if you subsize production in one, then a use subsidiy amplifies the problem.
The US just fixed that.
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To trumpet the merits of free trade to the rest of the world, of course.
Re:Let me see if I get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
"they tuk uuur juuubs" idiots
get back to us in 10-20 years from now and tell us if YOU are still employed.
obviously you are well employed and proud of it.
but what is now, won't always be. I was once like you are: young, arrogant and thought I owned the world.
THINGS CHANGE.
but people like you, in your current mind-frame, are NOT HELPING.
Re:Let me see if I get this straight (Score:5, Interesting)
"they tuk uuur juuubs" idiots
get back to us in 10-20 years from now and tell us if YOU are still employed.
obviously you are well employed and proud of it.
but what is now, won't always be. I was once like you are: young, arrogant and thought I owned the world.
THINGS CHANGE.
but people like you, in your current mind-frame, are NOT HELPING.
I can't tell you how many people that I've heard bitching and complaining about "the nanny state" and "handouts" since Obama got elected that, once they themselves have fallen on hard times, had no problem whatsoever being a huge hypocrite and taking those "handouts" from the "nanny state" themselves. One old 'friend' (more of an acquaintance these days) in particular regularly posts shit about kicking people off of Medicaid saying that it's not his responsibility to take care of "freeloaders". Meanwhile his wife has been milking Social Security for a decade due to a car accident which injured her ankle and is "unable to work".
Hypocrisy is being worn almost like a badge of honor these days. I honestly can't tell if it's deliberate or people are seriously so fucking stupid and short-sighted that they can't imagine being in similar situations.
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However they want to rationalize the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. Of course they deserve to collect the benefits they paid for! It's all those other lazy scum living on the Nanny State that need to be cut off....
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Well said.
This is why I'm heading back to college. The demand for hardware engineers has dried-up... everything is moving to fixed, proven designs with moderate speed upgrades (swap-out the old Pentium for a P4 or a DualCore). Simple. The main demand is for software upgrades ever year or so; there's like 10 more SW engineers than HW engineers. So time to earn that software degree. As you said THINGS CHANGE.
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"they tuk uuur juuubs"
This needs to be said a la South Park [youtube.com]
It doesn't matter (Score:2)
China has cheap workforce and huge rare earth production, they will make the panels regardless of subsidies or tariffs.
Solar war (Score:2)
Begun the Solar War has.
Well (Score:3, Interesting)
That petition alleges that the Chinese government unfairly subsidizes crystalline silicon photovoltaic solar cells and modules by providing cash grants, tax rebates, cheap loans, and other benefits designed to artificially suppress Chinese export prices and drive U.S. competitors out of the market.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/15/445193/us-decision-chinese-solar-panel-imports-tariffs-partial-solution/?mobile=nc [thinkprogress.org]
Why was the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge built in China?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]
Why is American infrastructure in general being built by Chinese?
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads [americanma...turing.org]
Why are these jobs subsidizing China?
Because we can't find welders,
Watch the video.
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads [americanma...turing.org]
Don't act like US (Score:2)
We subsidize corn production and then sell it round the world. But it's okay when we do it; not okay when China does it (with solar). Double standard.
Chinese Dumping (Score:2)
A very common practice. Here's a link to the last accusation of steel dumping:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1893784,00.html [time.com]
This is about Solyndra (Score:2)
The whole reason Solyndra went bankrupt was that their whole business model depended on a higher price for solar panels. They were totally caught off guard by the cheapness of Chinese panels. Yet another area of tension between the relatively privileged life we enjoy in the use and the rise of cheap yet adequately skilled label in East Asia.
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However, if they had been better stewards of the money and not spent like drunken sailors on DotCom era perks, and maybe not built the plant in an area with high property costs and high labor... They would have able to compete with Chinese solar panels.
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They could have built the plant in Mississippi and the labor costs would have been better with vastly lower real estate costs. I'd bet Mississippi would have given them land and all the tax incentives they'd ever want.
Important concept: "Dumping" (Score:5, Informative)
There's a larger game afoot here than just price. This is about what happens in the long-term when a country unfairly supports a domestic industry and artificially lowers the cost of that industry's products on the marketplace. What results from this is the failure of producers of that good in other countries, which in turn results in a monopoly, or at the very least, market share dominance. Then, the prices can go back up, leaving other countries with less competition and a strategic disadvantage. In this case, that disadvantage also includes an energy source, so there's a double-risk.
And yes, I know...they can always just start up new companies, right? Wrong...it's not that easy. Because in the meanwhile, the surviving companies have been able to invest in R&D, and further lower costs, improve manufacturing processes, and innovate, all of which raise the barrier to entry in the market. And even if a company elsewhere comes onto the market and starts competing effectively...China would only have to start subsidizing their own industry again to put them at a disadvantage, and the cycle repeats itself.
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Only a problem if you think patents are worth respecting.
Another approach would be to buy the panels (and anything else produced at subsidised prices) and focus on other areas. Once they put the prices up, you steal their tech and make them yourselves.
Of course if you have shut down your rare earth mining facility because your tiny capitalist minds said it was cheaper to get them from China, well I guess there is some benefits to a planned economy after all.
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tariffs and subsidies (Score:5, Informative)
I'm all for placing tariffs on all Chinese imports. Yes, that raises prices on our end with respect to imports from China. China has a history of dumping (look up the term). The US needs to place tariffs on Chinese products to reduce the impact of its dumping procedures.
Tariffs on solar panels from China are not inconsistent with subsidies on solar panels. Why? Because while subsidies (artificially) increase demand in a good; tariffs (artificially) decrease demand in a good. The combined affect gently nudges people to purchase solar panels not produced in China.
And that, my friends, is how tariffs and subsidies can apply to the same market.
Too late (Score:4, Insightful)
They should've done this before Solyndra went bankrupt and took $500M of tax payer money with them.
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or Before BP Solar Went Under [wsj.com]
Most of Slashdot doesn't understand. (Score:5, Informative)
The subsidizes are to promote solar panels usage (generally a good thing) while the tariff is to counteract China's subsidies (dumping). Note, this is purely for China and not for solar panels made in other countries, especially those made locally. Letting China have such a large advantage due to China's subsidies would only hurt the US in the long term (see situation with rare earth metal as an reference). If you are complaining about the free market, well it's not already free due to China's subsidies and this would only level the playing field.
only if the market is rational (Score:2)
A bit late (Score:2)
Too bad they did this after Solyndra was on the rocks, and then needed a bailout, and then failed anyways.
Rare Earths Battle (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the Opening Salvo by the U.S. against China in their Rare Earths Suit involving the WTO. China has restricted exports of rare earths to the U.S. Japan and Europe that is impacting the ability of our industry to produce, EV's, Wind Generators and many other products that depend upon them. There is also the issue of the strategic metals part of those rare earths and explains part of the reasoning behind the reopening of the Mesa California Rare Earth mine.
Others have pointed out that this is also due to China Dumping cheap solar panels on the market with the express purpose of killing our own industry. The only way I can see to level the playing field against China is to revoke their most favored trading partner status that Bush Jr. Gave them. This will simulateously send the Chinese government a signal that America is no longer going to be their bitch and increase the cost of Chinese goods in the States while encouraging those American Businesses that still exist to increase their marketing. Of course, without nailing some CEO's to the wall and hitting their wallets for the destruction of companies (violating their fiduciary responsibilities) the cost of goods from China wont materialy increase. A side note here
Recently, ABC World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer ran a series on Made In America that showed many U.S. Companies selling products for the same price as Chinese manufactered junk with higher quality. So why in hell do you want to buy Chinese crap and send our work to them?
Muddled (Score:2)
Subsidizing demand led to subsidized production. In other words, one market interference (subsidized demand for solar) leads to its counterpoint, government tariff and taxation of the same product.
This is muddled logic. There's no reason for subsidized demand to lead to subsidized production if demand is subsidized to the point where producers can make a profit. Well, no reason other than to make sure jobs get created in your country instead of somewhere else.
Effects (Score:2)
Subsidizing demand anywhere does not favour any manufacturer. Subsidizing suppliers in China disadvantages suppliers anywhere else, perhaps to the point of driving them out of business and leaving the Chinese infrastructure in place who can then charge whatever they want.
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The last man standing monopoly (examples: Microsoft OS/Explorer, Kmart, Bluray Consortium) only works until a new guy comes-along (Apple, Google, Mozilla, Walmart, streaming movie downloads) and challenges it with lower prices. Then the monopoly must either lower its prices back to free market levels, or die.
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the electronics industry - no need to dump, because now there's simply too much of a concentration of manufacturing in China.
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Informative)
1. Apple's resurgence was due to the iPod, a market that Microsoft didn't have any hardware that could compete with. Microsoft continues to be the only vendor to sell stand-alone desktop operating systems that are not tied to hardware. The "Microsoft browser monopoly" never existed (Netscape had a near-monopoly at first, remember?).
2. KMart never had a retail monopoly. Until it merged with Sears, the two were always competitors in the down-market retail sector, and sears was the leader for decades.
3. "The DVD/Bluray Consortium Monopoly" is total BS - that's like arguing "The Hard Drive/SSD Consortium Monopoly" or "The Car and Truck Monopoly". If you want to make such a comparison, I'll do the same with the "7 laptop manufacturers in Taiwan with factories in China" who actually DO have a world-wide monopoly. But does any one of them have a monopoly? No - they compete like crazy.
4. You could "go on and on", and maybe eventually you'll find some valid examples, but these were not them.
Easy-peasy: Monopoly of more than 20 years: IBM Mainframes - well over 90% of the market [wikipedia.org] - anything over 80% is considered a de facto monopoly for anti-trust purposes.
So please explain how IBM continues to not just monopolize the mainframe, but grow it over more than half a century, if it's not possible for such a monopoly to exist more than 20 years?
Then there are the sports franchise monopolies. Is anyone seriously challenging the NHL in profiessional hockey, the NFL in professional football, or MLB in professional baseball? No, and for most of the last century, the courts have recognized that the baseball monopoly is exempt from anti-trust laws.
So that's 4 strikes against your argument that no monopoly has ever existed for more than 20 years - those 4 certainly have, and still exist today. :-)
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Why is it cheaper in China? Maybe because their workers operate round-the-clock, while our workers are not allowed (due to labor protection laws). It may be time to demand China stop forcing their workers to operate 70, 80, 90 hours a week.
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Maybe because their workers operate round-the-clock
According to Steve Jobs. He claimed this is the reason he manufactures in China, because they are available 24/7 whenever Apple needs a rush job. American workers aren't. I say it's time for the EU/US to insist China start treating their workers better (or else cut off the product at the incoming port). Having the Chinese operate 70-80 hours a week, or woken up in the middle of the night to drag them into a factory, is an infringement upon basic human rights.
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The thing is, when you're doing a months long product rollout, having a change underway a whole 8-12 hours sooner at the expense of abusing the workforce is more about ego stroking than practical need. The rollout would have gone just the same without that nonsense.
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Insightful)
a few years ago, I turned down a job offer (sf bay area) that generally looked ok to me, except for one showstopper: they demanded *mandatory* (their word, not mine) saturdays.
not sprinting, not 'on late milestones' but regularly, like, we expect you here at least half to 3/4 of a day every single saturday. period.
I tried to convince them that this was a stopper and they would either be burning out their existing people or they'd be running thru a lot of in/out workers over their product cycles. they did not care and would not budge.
I walked away. good money but I refuse to work for a slave operation.
when I interviewed with most of the folks there, I could TELL that they were beaten down, tired, worn out and hanging on by a thread. I could see myself hating that very quickly.
given the economic times, they felt they COULD push this shit on an employee.
and unless we return to our union era and start busting heads of companies (not literally, of course) who abuse their workers, nothing will change. companies think they can dictate things that are absurd and yet, they often get away with it.
not that it even matters much, but this was a company that had a spotlight on slash. they had a 'tech write-up' on them and how cool they were on this or that energy front (yes, it had a 'green side' to it and they also received a huge grant from the DOE on their 'green computing' bullshit).
I wonder how many of those guys still work there? how many are hating their lives and can't wait to find something else?
I'm fairly sure that none of them got any stock that is worth the effort they put in. it was a salary and that's about it; unless you are on the board or a VC, your stock is bullshit, these days, and we all know it. its not the stock that keeps you there anymore, its fear of being sent to the poorhouse.
'mandatory saturdays' is not the same as 'chinese hours', so to speak; but we're inching our way there, aren't we!
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Interesting)
'mandatory saturdays' is not the same as 'chinese hours', so to speak; but we're inching our way there, aren't we!
When Occupy Wall St. was just starting up, there was this marine [wordpress.com] who was proud of the fact that he was working 60-70 hour weeks and it took him 8 years to get a degree.
While a lot of people clamped onto his work ethic and said it was an example of what's great with America, a lot of people also said he's an example of just exactly what's wrong with America.
I can't write as well this early (relatively, for me) in the day, so I'll just quote from the above article:
I understand your pride in what you’ve accomplished, but I want to ask you something.
Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.
And what happens if you get sick? You say you don’t have health insurance, but since you’re a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system. I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don’t know what your situation is. But even if you have access to health care, it doesn’t mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks.
Do you plan to get married, have kids? Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation? Is it going to be fair to her? Is it going to be fair to your kids? Is it going to be fair to you?
I worked at a job - worked, as in past tense - for a month as a manager. My first job as manager, no less. The company was running all of their employees 70-90 hours a week (a lot of that was driving time on the road), sometimes more. Overtime was non-existant. The boss would keep taking more and more jobs while refusing to either slow the pace or hire more people to handle the workload.
The boss would bitch about the (rare) new hire being unexperienced, yet he wouldn't invest in even minimal training other than "Here's how you do this particular job - now go repeat this process 5,000 times over the next 12 hours." He would bitch about payroll, yet not take either solution to solve the problem (cut down on the work, or hire more people). He would blow up at me and try to get me to act as a vehicle for his anger towards the employees (to which I adamantly refused).
I tried to act as a buffer by... translating diplomatically. People were "fired" three or four times in my entire month there. "Tell him to get the fuck to the job in the next 15 minutes or he's fucking fired!" would translate to, "Hey, the boss is getting a bit mad, could you try to hurry it up a bit? I know you've been on the road for 12 hours but I'm getting a lot of shit dropped on my head." I felt like a Sergeant getting retarded orders from some idiotic general higher up in the chain of command - all I could really do is try to protect my guys (one of whom was my best friend) and keep the cash flow going.
I eventually quit. Boss's sweet-talk aside, the above things unsettled me too much. I was working 80 hours a week and literally not getting paid (not even straight time) for half of that. Violation of OSHA and federal law was rampant. I suppose I could have reported them to some government agency who may or may not have taken action, but that would have likely just ended up with the people I liked there (literally everybody but the boss) jobl
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Violation of OSHA
Violation of osha hell that is straight up violation of DOT regs. No driver shall... There are explicit rules for how much you can work. By federal law. 70 is the max btw... And that is only if you have a 36 hour break.
Companies like this need to be turned in and put out of business. One DOT audit and that place would be shut down. Those rules were made to not only protect the workers but to create less accidents.
Please *PLEASE* turn them in.
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/outreach/consumers/safthotline.htm [dot.gov]
1-888-DOT-SAFT call it now please. This is for the safety of not only those people but everyone who drives near them. There is a shortage of good drivers. They would have no trouble getting work elsewhere. Probably at higher pay too.
I have seen too many rolled over trucks and the like to have any sympathy for that business. Most of the time it is guys like your old boss who care nothing for the welfare of anyone else but himself.
There are gov regs to control this. They were invented just because of idiots like your old boss. You dont even need a union involved with this.
It will basically go down like this. They will show up tear him a new one. Give him warnings to clean up his mess (about 6months to a year). Then show up and give him hefty fines if he hasnt cleaned up. Give him another 6 months to clean up. After that they will pull all of his vehicles permits. In effect putting him out of business.
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Interesting)
companies think they can dictate things that are absurd and yet, they often get away with it.
There was an employer here in town a few years ago that basically called a company meeting and told everyone that they had to take a 10% pay cut or else he was laying them off and hiring in new people to work for lower wages. When the employees obviously went completely apeshit, the owner said "Don't blame me, blame the economy".
So the employees, they all get together in their own time and they work out ways for them to cut costs, give up their vacations and shit, sacrifice some bonuses, raises, and shift differentials, agree to higher production quotas, and manage to come up with a plan that will enable the boss to cut costs without cutting the employee pay so drastically. The owner's response? "No, my decision to cut your pay is final. The economy is weak right now, and I'm going to capitalize on that by cutting wages back. I don't have to do this, but I am going to anyway to increase my bottom line. Don't like it, there's the door. If you think you're going to organize, be aware that I will fire all of you and move this entire operation to Kentucky."
The employees were obviously furious, but what could they do? A few did quit, but most of them just sucked it up because even a 10% pay cut is better than working for minimum wage in retail or collecting a paltry $300 bucks a week in unemployment that won't even cover a mortgage payment. It turns out it didn't matter anyway, because not long after that, the owner fired everyone and moved to Kentucky just like he threatened, obviously having had plans to do that all along.
If I were those new employees in Kentucky, I wouldn't get too comfortable. I'm sure Mexico or China is going to start looking more and more attractive to him every single day...
Re:What they are really looking for .... (Score:5, Insightful)
simple: look at life in the US before unions.
the fact that ANYONE has saturdays off or sundays off is pretty much entirely due to unions and a small bit of balance of power.
your grandfather likely would be quite angry with your 'why do we need unions anymore?' attitude.
and quite frankly, I'm angry at your attitude, too.
It's my choice what company I work for, not some unions.
oh yeah? keep thinking that, buddy. you will eventually find out how totally wrong you are! but by then, it will be kind of late...
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Would you mandate that they MUST leave? what if they like the job? or what if they feel that they are being reasonably compensated for their work? Who do you think you are to decide what tradeoffs are appropriate for someone other than yourself? It was admited that the pay was good, perhaps the pay is better than other places specifically to compensate for this clause in their contract, and maybe some people are willing to make that trade.
If an employer asks for things nobody will give, then they won't have
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those that were there, seemed like they had no other choice. they had families, mortgages and were wage-slaves like you and I are.
it can take months to find a job in today's market. or longer.
ask a parent to take a few months of non-pay and see how happy they'd be.
they are mostly forced to work there. the invisible hand forces them, just like that invisible hand 'guides' the economy (rolls eyes).
"just go elsewhere!". yeah, right. and when its a game that more and more companies are playing? what happe
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I think the naive answer is that whoever raised this tariff (or those who bribed the politicians to implement it) now expect the chinese to throw up their hands in surprise and say "Oh, I suppose we'd better stop making these panels in our cheap factories and start making them in unionised western factories instead. ... No, I'm sure our customers in those countries won't mind paying 2 or 3 times what they pay now, since they'll know they're getting locally sourced product."
Just like has happened with ever
The core difference between the U.S. and China (Score:4, Interesting)
In China, the government owns the banking system.
In the U.S., the banking system owns the government.
The Chinese government gives basically interest-free loans, through the state's bank, to the industrial sectors of their economy. The U.S. government guaranteed Solyndra's loans, meaning the government was on the hook for the interest payments to Wall Street when Solyndra couldn't make enough off their solar panels to both cover the costs of manufacturing and their interest-heavy loan payments.
If Solyndra's guarantee had been properly structured, the U.S. Government would now own a fully-functional photovoltaic factory. The government's factory should be cranking out as many watt-hours of "solar tubes" as possible, and installing these on government buildings in sunny locations. They'd get the solar tubes for cost (as the new owners of the plant), decrease energy prices for everyone, and save a ton of money.
Oh well.
Ellen Brown [wordpress.com] has a nice take on the difference in China's economic strategy.