8 ms·

This would have happened a bit earlier if the most efficient and long-lasting solar panels, monocrystalline silicon, had been developed by US manufacturers inst

This would have happened a bit earlier if the most efficient and long-lasting solar panels, monocrystalline silicon, had been developed by US manufacturers instead of by Chinese ones. All the tariffs applied by state and federal regulators on the import of these panels have been about slowing the rate of solar PV production in the USA on behalf of the fossil fuel and investor-owned utility sectors. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chinas-monocrystalline-boom/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chin... Claims that these tariffs have some human rights motivations are nonsensical, would the US block imports of Saudi oil over human rights abuses there? Of course not - but silicon solar panels, oh my! https://www.reuters.com/world/china/exclusive-us-blocks-more-than-1000-solar-shipments-over-chinese-slave-labor-2022-11-11/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/exclusive-us-blocks-more... It's no surprise that the pushback by politicians owned by investors in fossil fuels and utilities has been so intense - energy is one of the most lucrative investments, and it's rather difficult to control and meter the flow of sunlight to homes, in comparison to natural gas or crude oil. Notably, the USA has no R & D programs or subsidy programs like the CHIPS act (for semiconductors for computation, not for power production) aimed at rapidly expanding monocrystalline silicon production.

nroets 4y ago
Why should the US try to lead solar panel technology ? China has many talented engineers and plenty of venture capital. I'd prefer them to invest it in solar panel manufacturing and power electronics rather than social media, ai or Telco technology.
- rainsford 4y ago
  Relying on a non-friendly country for something so crucial as energy is generally not a great position to be in, particularly if that country has rival world power ambitions. Europe and Russia have provided a great recent example of why you don't want to be reliant on potential enemies for your energy needs, and while the situation between the US and China is not the same and solar is different than fossil fuels, it's still a factor worth thinking about. The US would be a lot more secure being able to rely on a domestic solar industry as solar becomes more and more important.
  - lube 4y ago
    I think your vision is too US centric, US hegemony lead to disruptions to foreign nations like afghanistan, iraq, libya, etc. My pov from latinamerica is that my country could be next, and neither your culture nor your "business class" seems the future(we reflect your cultural hegemony with our version of shitty role models), si why not challenge US hegemony?
    - Armisael16 4y ago
      The tariffs and policy in questions are being set by the US - of course the discussion is US-centric, the question being discussed is ‘how should the US be approaching this?’
    - jimkleiber 4y ago
      I think their main point was that it doesn't make sense for the US to challenge US hegemony.
    - gibbonsrcool 4y ago
      The second biggest geopolitical opponent to the US, Russia, is in major decline. Their primary opponent, China, is slowing down and has enormous domestic problems to deal with that are projected to worsen for a long period of time. The US was supposed to be behind in AI research, but technologically, they're ahead. I believe that once AI is used to exert geopolitical pressure, economically or through counter action, it will be a runaway advantage. If this were Star Wars I think we'd be at the point where we were only starting to see the rise of the Empire.
    - goodluckchuck 4y ago
      Hegemony is inevitable, prosperous, and peaceful. Anyone who would challenge US hegemony would either intend to establish themselves their own hegemony or would be patsies creating a situation where another force could do so. Do would we be better off under a global islamic caliphate deriving from afghanistan, iraq, libya, etc… or a Chinese hegemoney, or a German hegemony? I’d put American hegemony up against any civilization that the world has ever seen in terms of equity, prosperity, and peace.
- rapsey 4y ago
  Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.
  - mkoubaa 4y ago
    Not fully true. There are incredibly competent manufacturing engineers living there. By a factor of at least 5 over the US
    - sremani 4y ago
      I am not contending Chinese are any shape or form incapable, given the factory floor of the world for a generation they do have best of the best. The issue is State subsidies and Environmental and Labor regulation that is flimsy. Any American company operating on US soil will be uncompetitive from Day 1 trying to follow, Federal, State and EPA regulation. As much as Solar Panels are touted in Environmental community, they are a product of intense chemical process that produces poisonous waste.
      - splistud 4y ago
        [dead]
  - peoplefromibiza 4y ago
    Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap? EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"
    - lemoncookiechip 4y ago
      Because they have a half-eaten apple as a logo.
    - rcarr 4y ago
      Because you’re not just paying for a physical device. You’re also paying for the software that runs on it which is best in class. And before people start saying it’s not, how many people are running 7 year old androids compared to iPhones? In USD, A brand new iPhone, kept for 7 years works out at 32 cents a day - phenomenally cheap for something integral to modern day life. And that’s not even taking into account you can most likely sell it for $50/$100 at the end of that seven years, making it even cheaper.
- nforgerit 4y ago
  German speaking here. This position brought a lot of harm and made the German economy very fragile. The German business model in the last decades was based on cheap security (NATO), cheap gas (Russia) and a huge market to sell cars (China). And here we are in 2023, paying 100s of billions of tax money for (maybe) having a working army in a couple of years, a near collapsing economy bc of zeroed gas imports and a tightening market in China. Still relying on boundless global trade in 2023 is just.. a funny position.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Not to get off topic but that's why BMW has changed their grill and car design so much even though Western journalists hate it. They are targeting the Asian market.
- somesortofsystm 4y ago
  Just stop. China as a manufacturing solution for anyone but the people of the region must cease. It is utterly inefficient to produce stuff far, far from where it will be used. Spreading things out like this is balls. Lets start building again. If we're to get off this dust-ball, we have to learn to do things ourselves, again.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Isn't it just economics? How can a US company compete with the cost of labor?
    - somesortofsystm 4y ago
      "Just economics", sure, its cheap to exploit China. That's why I'm saying: just, stop! It has to become consumer-preferred to have something cool be built locally. This won't happen until someone builds something cool this way.
    - nforgerit 4y ago
      And how is the economics changing if you internalize social and environmental cost?
      - themitigating 4y ago
        Can you elaborate, I don't know what you mean
        nforgerit 4y ago
        Well I'm calling bullshit on neoliberal free-trade ideology based on voodoo economics which just looks at simple measurable factors like "cost of labor" completely ignoring social cost (local unemployment, mass migration, social tensions, etc.) and ecological cost (pollution, climate crisis, etc.) which were commonly socialized (tax money) in case of a concrete crisis. Not a personal attack, sorry if it sounded like that.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bufferoverflow 4y ago
You're forgetting labor costs in the US are much higher and environmental regulations are much more strict. So US made panels will unlikely to ever be price competitive with the Chinese made ones.
- Teever 4y ago
  I was under the impression that most of the cost difference between Chinese and American panels was due to dumping efforts by the Chinese government.
  - philipkglass 4y ago
    Dumping is when a producer sells their product at a lower price abroad than they do domestically [1]. For example, if Chinese solar panels sell for the Renminbi equivalent of 35 cents per watt domestically, but are sold for 30 cents per watt in the United States, that would be dumping. As far as I can tell, Chinese solar manufacturers do not engage in this sort of straightforward and easy to define dumping. They sell their products at comparable low prices both domestically and abroad. The United States claims that advantages given to Chinese solar manufacturers (like low cost land and industrial partnerships with local governments) are unfair and counters them with measures termed "anti dumping" tariffs. Given how many perks American states and municipalities roll out to attract manufacturing jobs, including solar jobs [2], I don't see how the Chinese incentives for solar manufacturing go too far. I rather think it's something like the situation with Canadian softwood exports to the US [3]: the US government's position is dubious, but it's too powerful in practice to be held to account. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp [2] https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-promising-500-new-jobs-gets-tax-break/ https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-promising-50... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Come on, you can make silicon monocrystalline products without pollution with appropriate controls, it's no different from the computer chip production process. See CHIPS act? China doesn't have a big natural gas / crude oil sector trying to block development of alternatives to their products, that's the difference.
konschubert 4y ago
Your comment makes no sense. The tariffs boosted domestic production of solar panels. The tariffs also increased the cost of solar panels, so they slowed adoption of solar. You can have Made in America, or you can have cheap, but you cannot have both.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  You have knowledge of an American producer of monocrystalline silicon solar panels? Please provide more information, this is new to me.

nroets 4y ago

Why should the US try to lead solar panel technology ? China has many talented engineers and plenty of venture capital. I'd prefer them to invest it in solar panel manufacturing and power electronics rather than social media, ai or Telco technology.

rainsford 4y ago
Relying on a non-friendly country for something so crucial as energy is generally not a great position to be in, particularly if that country has rival world power ambitions. Europe and Russia have provided a great recent example of why you don't want to be reliant on potential enemies for your energy needs, and while the situation between the US and China is not the same and solar is different than fossil fuels, it's still a factor worth thinking about. The US would be a lot more secure being able to rely on a domestic solar industry as solar becomes more and more important.
- lube 4y ago
  I think your vision is too US centric, US hegemony lead to disruptions to foreign nations like afghanistan, iraq, libya, etc. My pov from latinamerica is that my country could be next, and neither your culture nor your "business class" seems the future(we reflect your cultural hegemony with our version of shitty role models), si why not challenge US hegemony?
  - Armisael16 4y ago
    The tariffs and policy in questions are being set by the US - of course the discussion is US-centric, the question being discussed is ‘how should the US be approaching this?’
  - jimkleiber 4y ago
    I think their main point was that it doesn't make sense for the US to challenge US hegemony.
  - gibbonsrcool 4y ago
    The second biggest geopolitical opponent to the US, Russia, is in major decline. Their primary opponent, China, is slowing down and has enormous domestic problems to deal with that are projected to worsen for a long period of time. The US was supposed to be behind in AI research, but technologically, they're ahead. I believe that once AI is used to exert geopolitical pressure, economically or through counter action, it will be a runaway advantage. If this were Star Wars I think we'd be at the point where we were only starting to see the rise of the Empire.
  - goodluckchuck 4y ago
    Hegemony is inevitable, prosperous, and peaceful. Anyone who would challenge US hegemony would either intend to establish themselves their own hegemony or would be patsies creating a situation where another force could do so. Do would we be better off under a global islamic caliphate deriving from afghanistan, iraq, libya, etc… or a Chinese hegemoney, or a German hegemony? I’d put American hegemony up against any civilization that the world has ever seen in terms of equity, prosperity, and peace.
rapsey 4y ago
Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to produce them.
- mkoubaa 4y ago
  Not fully true. There are incredibly competent manufacturing engineers living there. By a factor of at least 5 over the US
  - sremani 4y ago
    I am not contending Chinese are any shape or form incapable, given the factory floor of the world for a generation they do have best of the best. The issue is State subsidies and Environmental and Labor regulation that is flimsy. Any American company operating on US soil will be uncompetitive from Day 1 trying to follow, Federal, State and EPA regulation. As much as Solar Panels are touted in Environmental community, they are a product of intense chemical process that produces poisonous waste.
    - splistud 4y ago
      [dead]
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap? EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor people who built it cannot afford it"
  - lemoncookiechip 4y ago
    Because they have a half-eaten apple as a logo.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    Because you’re not just paying for a physical device. You’re also paying for the software that runs on it which is best in class. And before people start saying it’s not, how many people are running 7 year old androids compared to iPhones? In USD, A brand new iPhone, kept for 7 years works out at 32 cents a day - phenomenally cheap for something integral to modern day life. And that’s not even taking into account you can most likely sell it for $50/$100 at the end of that seven years, making it even cheaper.
nforgerit 4y ago
German speaking here. This position brought a lot of harm and made the German economy very fragile. The German business model in the last decades was based on cheap security (NATO), cheap gas (Russia) and a huge market to sell cars (China). And here we are in 2023, paying 100s of billions of tax money for (maybe) having a working army in a couple of years, a near collapsing economy bc of zeroed gas imports and a tightening market in China. Still relying on boundless global trade in 2023 is just.. a funny position.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Not to get off topic but that's why BMW has changed their grill and car design so much even though Western journalists hate it. They are targeting the Asian market.
somesortofsystm 4y ago
Just stop. China as a manufacturing solution for anyone but the people of the region must cease. It is utterly inefficient to produce stuff far, far from where it will be used. Spreading things out like this is balls. Lets start building again. If we're to get off this dust-ball, we have to learn to do things ourselves, again.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Isn't it just economics? How can a US company compete with the cost of labor?
  - somesortofsystm 4y ago
    "Just economics", sure, its cheap to exploit China. That's why I'm saying: just, stop! It has to become consumer-preferred to have something cool be built locally. This won't happen until someone builds something cool this way.
  - nforgerit 4y ago
    And how is the economics changing if you internalize social and environmental cost?
    - themitigating 4y ago
      Can you elaborate, I don't know what you mean
      - nforgerit 4y ago
        Well I'm calling bullshit on neoliberal free-trade ideology based on voodoo economics which just looks at simple measurable factors like "cost of labor" completely ignoring social cost (local unemployment, mass migration, social tensions, etc.) and ecological cost (pollution, climate crisis, etc.) which were commonly socialized (tax money) in case of a concrete crisis. Not a personal attack, sorry if it sounded like that.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bufferoverflow 4y ago

You're forgetting labor costs in the US are much higher and environmental regulations are much more strict. So US made panels will unlikely to ever be price competitive with the Chinese made ones.

Teever 4y ago
I was under the impression that most of the cost difference between Chinese and American panels was due to dumping efforts by the Chinese government.
- philipkglass 4y ago
  Dumping is when a producer sells their product at a lower price abroad than they do domestically [1]. For example, if Chinese solar panels sell for the Renminbi equivalent of 35 cents per watt domestically, but are sold for 30 cents per watt in the United States, that would be dumping. As far as I can tell, Chinese solar manufacturers do not engage in this sort of straightforward and easy to define dumping. They sell their products at comparable low prices both domestically and abroad. The United States claims that advantages given to Chinese solar manufacturers (like low cost land and industrial partnerships with local governments) are unfair and counters them with measures termed "anti dumping" tariffs. Given how many perks American states and municipalities roll out to attract manufacturing jobs, including solar jobs [2], I don't see how the Chinese incentives for solar manufacturing go too far. I rather think it's something like the situation with Canadian softwood exports to the US [3]: the US government's position is dubious, but it's too powerful in practice to be held to account. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp [2] https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-promising-500-new-jobs-gets-tax-break/ https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-promising-50... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
photochemsyn 4y ago
Come on, you can make silicon monocrystalline products without pollution with appropriate controls, it's no different from the computer chip production process. See CHIPS act? China doesn't have a big natural gas / crude oil sector trying to block development of alternatives to their products, that's the difference.

konschubert 4y ago

Your comment makes no sense. The tariffs boosted domestic production of solar panels. The tariffs also increased the cost of solar panels, so they slowed adoption of solar. You can have Made in America, or you can have cheap, but you cannot have both.

photochemsyn 4y ago
You have knowledge of an American producer of monocrystalline silicon solar panels? Please provide more information, this is new to me.