Obama Administration Punishes China With Trade Tariffs Because They Subsidize Solar Panels

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Written By:
Rob Port

Mar 21, 2012
9:08am

Here in America, we subsidize our solar industry pretty heavily. In China, they subsidize their solar industry pretty heavily too. But we don’t like that here in America, because that means China’s solar companies are too competitive with our solar companies. So now we’re punishing China with trade tariffs for doing the exact same thing we’re doing.

It’s obvious, to me at least, that the Obama administration is looking to use this as cover for the Solyndra debacle. You see, Solyndra’s collapse wasn’t because they were a bad investment with poor management that never could have been competitive in the market. Solyndra failed because of unfair competition from China.

It’s politics, in other words, which is unfortunate because if the goal really is to get Americans using solar power (something for which our federal governments has endless subsidies and credits available), you’d think we’d welcome an influx of reasonably-priced solar products from China.

But the goal here isn’t so much solar power as it is crony capitalism. While competition from China might actually be good for spreading solar use in that it drives down prices and drives up quality, it’s bad for Obama’s cronies in the green industry.