The EU imposed minimum import price restrictions on Chinese solar modules for 5 years from 2013-2018: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/08/31/eu-ends-mip-agains

The EU imposed minimum import price restrictions on Chinese solar modules for 5 years from 2013-2018: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/08/31/eu-ends-mip-against-chinese/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/08/31/eu-ends-mip-against-c... As I see it, there are a couple of reasons German manufacturers couldn't regain competitiveness during this period: - The scale of their operations is too small. The largest Chinese manufacturers operate at a different order of magnitude. - Making comparable products at the same scale, Chinese products would still tend to cost less. For the same reasons that you can get a made-in-China toaster cheaper than a made-in-Germany one. At its peak, leading German manufacturer SolarWorld had capacity to produce about 1,400 megawatts of modules per year: https://www.printedelectronicsnow.com/contents/view_breaking-news/2014-11-06/solarworld-expands-production-capacity-in-the/ https://www.printedelectronicsnow.com/contents/view_breaking... Leading Chinese manufacturer Longi shipped 24,500 megawatts of modules last year: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/longi-crowned-king-of-solar-with-24-5-gw-of-panels-shipped-in-2020/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/longi-crowned-king-of... The only profitable American solar company, First Solar, is also the largest, with 8,000 megawatts of capacity targeted by the end of this year: https://www.pv-tech.org/first-solar-adding-series-6-module-capacity-in-the-us-while-planning-wider-international-footprint/ https://www.pv-tech.org/first-solar-adding-series-6-module-c... That's smaller than the Chinese behemoths but still large enough to compete internationally. What I have seen from the EU is that even ambitions for new solar gigafactories are too small -- 1000-3000 megawatts of annual capacity. That still won't get costs within spitting distance of First Solar or the big Asian manufacturers. Part of the reason for the limited ambition is that there is no EU-wide consensus favoring "European" solar products. Germany wants to boost German solar manufacturing. France wants to boost French solar manufacturing. Spain wants to boost Spanish manufacturing. Individual countries only care about the EU policies so far as they favor that country; neither Spain nor Greece is particularly interested in policies boosting European solar manufacturing if the manufacturing ends up regionally concentrated in e.g. Italy. So these smaller solar manufacturers are stuck in a local maximum where they survive on political considerations (at least for a while) but can't grow to scales where they would be internationally competitive.