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Also, it's arguably good for the long-term health of renewable energy as a whole, since China would presumably want to turn a nice big profit on their investmen
by makomk 9y ago
Also, it's arguably good for the long-term health of renewable energy as a whole, since China would presumably want to turn a nice big profit on their investment once they'd driven all the other manufacturers out of business and the expertise to actually do so had been lost elsewhere.
- philipkglass 9y agoMaybe, or maybe not. Clothing imported from China didn't get expensive even after most onshore American clothing production ceased.
- makomk 9y agoClothing manufacturing is labour-intensive, relatively low tech, and just hops countries when labour gets more expensive in one place. Solar panels manufacturing has none of those properties. The general reckoning is that the Chinese government is subsidising local manufacturers, once the competitors close down and stop the expertise required to set up manufacturing elsewhere will decay and be lost and they'll have everyone over a barrel, and competing on cost of labour is irrelevant since it's such a small component of the cost.
- photojosh 9y agoA significant proportion of clothing production has moved to places like Bangladesh and Thailand (as labour costs in China rose over the last decade), and I'd wager that maintains the pressure on China to keep their prices low and not be able to gouge now that American manufacturers are mostly out of the picture.