Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 28, 2024, 12:14 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
#21
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
(January 29, 2018 at 10:15 am)vorlon13 Wrote: There's more than just profit/loss with Chinese solar panels, their manufacturing base's pollution is killing their people.

[Image: o-CHINA-SMOG-facebook.jpg]

Can’t argue that. I’ve been to China a few times. It is a shithole of a country. It’s nasty enough that I’ve never see a bird there and I’ve not seen a river that didn’t look like pea soup. Effen nasty, smelly, waist of a nation.

On the up side of the tariffs though; are a few businesses looking into getting into the solar panel manufacturing gig within the US simply because tariffs will allow them to manufacture at a profitable rate that can compare to the foreign solar market.
Reply
#22
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
The only way that a company's profitability hinges on this tariff..is if they;re directly competing in the shitty, dirty, knock off panel market......
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#23
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
Trump just said on the SOTU speech, that he wants trade relations to be fair and reciprocal. What a lying asshat.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
Reply
#24
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
(January 30, 2018 at 10:44 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Trump just said on the SOTU speech, that he wants trade relations to be fair and reciprocal.  What a lying asshat.

Implication of Richardo’s Law of comparative advantages is the benefit of trade amongst multiple parties is maximized when bilataeral trades between individual pairs of parties amongst them are not reciprocal.  Each party should focus on the manufacture and export of those goods in which it has the greatest comparative, not absolute, advantage.  

Amongst a group of Nations, Nation 1 with comparative advantage in goods A should focus on manufacture and export of goods A, and purchase all of its needs for goods B from Nation 2, which has camparatige advantage in goods B.  This remains just as true even if Nation 2 has little need of goods A, therefore import Little from Nation 1, thus when viewed in the bilateral context Nation 1 runs an aweful trade deficit with Nation 2.

The reason why Nation 1 Should not demand reciprocal trade relationship with Nation 2 is that by focusing on Goods A Instead of dissipating it’s advantages and also making something else that Nation 2 would wish to buy to redress the bilateral trade imbalance, Nation 1 actually maximizes the total value of its own global export to all of the other nations collectively. So trade deficit with Nation 2 actually improves Nation 1’s overall trade situations with all other nations collectively.

As with trump himself and much of the mean and narrow minded conservative world view, everything is viewed through a bilateral transactional and bigger slice of smaller pie lens, and no allowance is made for either global planning, collective good, or indirect action. It is as if we are still a hackling troop of baboons instead of a specie that has not only developed the academic field of economics, but also have the behavioral wherewithal to benefit from it.
Reply
#25
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
Talking about China...

Quote:China’s latest energy megaproject shows that coal really is on the way out


The Chinese province of Anhui built a massive floating solar farm on top of an abandoned coal mine.

An even larger floating solar plant will come online by May 2018.

Due to rising concerns surrounding air pollution-related deaths, China is trying to invest more heavily in renewable energy projects.

The new solar farms are part of the global shift away from energy generated from fossil fuels.


According to a 2016 study, the top contributor of air pollution-related deaths in China is the burning of coal. The team of Chinese and American researchers behind the study said that pollution from coal caused 366,000 premature deaths in 2013. [Why don't Chinese use Trump's clean coal?]

To improve the country's air quality, the Chinese government vows to spend at least $360 billion on clean energy projects and create 13 million new renewable energy jobs by 2020. China is already one of the world's biggest investor in alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and hydropower.

https://flipboard.com/@flipboard/-chinas...nsider.com
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Reply
#26
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
(January 29, 2018 at 7:47 am)Khemikal Wrote: Sure, but greed being a reality, we might want to point it in a better direction, lol.  Tilting at windmills, really.  The only way we get a cleaner, greener future is if there's a boatload of money in it.  While that may be a sad commentary on the nature of man and market, it is the reality.

The trick is to get customers informed.  So that they realize that the cheapest panels are..well..cheap ass knock-offs.  That's why step one for the bad actors was to subvert the industry groups that reliably tracked solar and turn them into their own marketing wings.  

In the long run, shitty solar is still an upgrade, and if some country wants to sell us a cheap product and incur the damage that it's manufacture causes on their own backyards, so be it.  It's at cross-purpose to why people buy solar (but not to why industry would go solar..they'll always go for the econo-panels).  To my mind, this is just a failure of branding, and thus a -failure- of greed.  The ad campaign is baked in.  Don't buy those shitty panels, they're not what you think they are.  Buy ours instead.  They're more expensive, and it's worth it.

Yay, boatloads of money for errybody!

There is nothing to this tariff except for making solar completely uncompetitive in the USA. That's it. Unless you have a quazi-American company that can get around this kind of tariff, sorry, but this is simply going to cause solar not to be built in the USA. Which is a shame, because the USA has plenty of very good, competitive solar resources.

This isn't an attempt to keep 'cheap ass knock-offs' out of the country. It's not 'shitty solar'. Chinese panels are fine quality wise (perhaps made with lower environmental or social standards, but don't pretend the US federal government gives a crap about that). This is simply an attack on solar PV because it's beginning to outcompete conventional energy on an even playing field. The overwhelming response from conventional energy companies is to try to shut the industry down on other levels, to defend their market share.

Also, the only reason the cost of PV solar has decreased so drastically in the last 10 years is because China has so fervently entered the market and developed the technology. So no, this isn't a case of the Chinese making 'knock-off' solar panels - they basically are the industry.
Reply
#27
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
They are, and the industry -is- cheap dirty panels now.  That's the irony of solar. It's not that the fed ever gave a shit (nor am I buying the admins sales pitch, because even if it were true it wouldn't work). The industry used to, and consumers used to. Not so much anymore. This is actually a pattern in the green market. Solar gets some steam behind it, manufacturers raced to the bottom and china just happens to be able to capitalize. Same thing happened with organic produce. A tariff makes US solar -more- uncompetitive because it promotes the same prsessures that made it uncompetitive in the first place. That they might be doing this at the behest of the fossil fuel industry is irrelevant, it doesn't actually matter why they were doing it, because we already know what will happen..after all, here we are, and as we agree, china -is- the industry. A tariff only compells a manufacturer to cut more corners, to find cheaper dirtier shit, to exploit more vulnerable materials sourcing, and when push comes to shove the US will never be able to compete with china on price in the first place.

Give it a google, you're not going to like what you find. The only thing that ever kept US solar competitive to begin with, was cheap waste silicon from electronics manufacturing. Just as soon as that ran dry the american sector started to slip. That was the offset to our higher production costs. Two completely identical panels, one made here and on in china, the one in china will cost less to manufacture. That sounds great, but chinese manufacturers aren't actually making identical panels. Even i they did (and there are a few manufacturers that do) the cheaper knock off panels will still cost less and this..more than anything else, drives the market. So here we are. Their environmental cost is higher, they produce less power, and become dangerous environmental waste, themselves, more quickly..but they're cheap. They're still better than coal, but that's a damned low bar, especially in China, lol.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#28
RE: Trumps 30% tariff on imported solar panels
And lo, the sungod doth provide an example.

Jinko Solar officially announced that it would be investing in a facility in Jax, Fl.  They say the plan is to invest 410million in the facility over a coarse of years, with an average wage of 46k a year.  Sounds great, but that's company pr.

The truth is that the salary number is massively inflated by ceo pay.  Jax has committed to providing 1/8th of the total investment upfront, just for starters (more than is required to begin operations).  The state has pledged yet more.  Jinko has been rushed, by an actual mob, over their dumping of toxic material into the local water supply back home.  They are ranked, by a sweetheart ranking, at the very bottom end of average as far as their techs efficiency.  Jinko was, as of last check, in the top two re the worlds largest suppliers of pv panels. Obviously their presence in Jax and the market will push out other operations with a better product, a better track record, or..you know, legitimate "american" cred. The worst part, is that they have no plans whatsoever to source their material from the US - that would be bad for business. They can satisfy the terms of the tariff by engaging in final assembly stateside. They intend to use their dirty panels and shitty offshore practices to prop up a state and local government fed profit spigot. I rate this no higher than simple grift, because this company produces panels that are demonstrably no greener than "beautiful clean coal" - even their pathetically substandard rating depends on completely ignoring their sourcing and manufacturing.

This is only the first example of how offshore entities will subvert the tariff to take advantage of corporate welfare while producing an inferior product here in the US to further secure the market share over their american competitors.  This is the face of solar, and they clearly don't -need- the fossil fuel industry running interference to send the entire thing into the toilet.

#MAGA.

Now, if the US wanted to do some actual good for the american solar industry (and solar in general), they would set efficiency and environmental requirements - curbing the ability to outcompete based on low wage labor and bad practices, just as we insist upon a certain level of quality in a number of other consumer products, and particularly in the generation of energy. No lead paint, no dumping, no faulty reactors, etc. Fat chance for the next few years, I know. A man can dream, though.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Solar Beams from space setting fires. brewer 25 1380 February 8, 2021 at 1:45 am
Last Post: Fake Messiah
  Does anyone understand Trumps base? Atomic Lava 72 6155 June 13, 2020 at 10:18 pm
Last Post: Zepp
  Trumps press conference....eek! Dancefortwo 14 839 September 27, 2018 at 10:34 am
Last Post: Foxaèr
  Realistically can anything be done regarding Trumps nomination? GODZILLA 22 2249 July 11, 2018 at 2:15 pm
Last Post: vorlon13
  Yeah...Trumps bigotry isn't hurting us at all GODZILLA 15 2163 May 20, 2018 at 8:08 am
Last Post: vorlon13
  Trumps Cell Phone chimp3 9 1946 June 2, 2017 at 3:27 am
Last Post: NuclearEnergy
  Security for Trumps Son and Daughter chimp3 15 1863 March 9, 2017 at 8:25 pm
Last Post: chimp3
  This will be Trumps' presidency very soon NuclearEnergy 50 8537 February 19, 2017 at 6:19 pm
Last Post: DarkerEnergy
  Trumps formal nomination kicked off with Sikh prayer CapnAwesome 0 490 July 20, 2016 at 1:53 pm
Last Post: CapnAwesome
  Trumps secret purplepurpose 0 450 June 8, 2016 at 3:00 am
Last Post: purplepurpose



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)