Comment by leonidasrup
4 days ago
Tariffs on solar panel imports should stimulate domestic solar panel production, but only when they are high enough and applied long enough to justify investments into new solar panel manufacturing facilities.
4 days ago
Tariffs on solar panel imports should stimulate domestic solar panel production, but only when they are high enough and applied long enough to justify investments into new solar panel manufacturing facilities.
Is oil production equipment similarly tariffed? No part of that supply chain comes from China? Otherwise, why solar panels specifically?
"The research results show that China controls the supply of primary materials, manufacturing, installed capacity, and recycling capacity. China alone produces at least 80 % of the main components of PVs."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277273782...
I'm asking about the supply chain for drilling, refining, and processing oil, my friend. Is that supply chain completely domestic? Nothing from China in there?
Top oil field equipment suppliers and manufacturers in the world are from: France, Switzerland, US, UK, Norway
https://www.blackridgeresearch.com/blog/list-top-global-oilf...
And what about the suppliers of those manufacturers?
1 reply →
You can do it with targeted tariffs with assurances they'll last but these broad tariffs make it harder to get the base materials you need to build the panels out of in the first place plus they're so crazy they're almost guaranteed to be wiped out in a few years if not sooner so as a manufacturer they don't have the confidence that the cost equalization of the tariffs will be around long enough to not bankrupt them.
Another way to do it would be guaranteed buys for electrifying military etc and grants for projects using US made cells instead of foreign ones that could also effectively subsidize local production.
It's like a lot of things done by this administration they do it such hamfisted and obvious ways that they don't accomplish their nominal goals. See a lot of the court cases where they've been blocked in implementation because they said the quiet part out loud. eg: it's usually REALLY hard to prove malicious prosecution but they keep saying out loud "we're prosecuting this person in retaliation for their protected activities".
It's important to tariff the basic materials Polysilicon, wafers, if you want to spread solar production around the world, not only in a single country.
https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/solar-pv-manu...
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