> Panasonic’s Canal said foreign solar panel manufacturers want the Buffalo plant’s cells because solar panels assembled abroad with American-made cells can be shipped to the United States tariff-free, according to U.S. trade rules implemented last fall.
> Panasonic’s Buffalo operation is one of few U.S.-based solar cell producers because it is traditionally far cheaper to make the components in other countries, putting it in a unique position to serve the foreign demand.
They would have to do the assembly into panels domestically as well if they didn't have the exemption due to the cells being US built.
All in all, it's a terrible deal for us.
If we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot on something made abroad, I propose we do it for smartphones. Slap a giant tariff on any cellphone made outside the US, like 1000%. Let's see how Americans like being stuck with their aging smartphones or having to spend $10k for a new one. Oh yeah, make sure the tariff applies to the LCD/OLED screens too, since we can't make those here.
The basic macroeconomic equations always tilt to the side of free trade. I majored in economics. The basic theories work in an ideal and simplified world, and don't account for all the variables. The "hollowing out" of American manufacturing was a result of globalization spurred by free trade. Any government intervention which isn't a subsidy is going to be less than ideal theoretically, but in a geopolitical reality can still be the right choice.
And to be sure, both the tax credit and net metering still provide a huge government subsidy for adding solar generation.
[1] - https://news-media.energysage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05...
Only in oversimplified models. Food production for example is generally a low margin business. However, that’s only the case with a surplus. Price shocks can wipe away even decades of minor savings very quickly.
Free trade creates more centralized production which is more likely to result in such price spikes. Thailand flooding resulting in a HDD prices doubling is a very recent example.
Putting aside the question of whether domestic manufacturing is more desirable than domestic production in other industries, this claim is not borne out by the data. Real manufacturing output is at an all-time high, passing the 2007 peak last year: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS
Perhaps you mean manufacturing employment?
"To make the output volume comparable from one year to the next, the statisticians aggregating the data adjust for price changes, as well as improvements in product quality. For example, let’s say statisticians want to figure out how much the sales of Intel processors grew in 2017 versus 2016.
The problem is, the processor released in 2017 is superior to that sold in 2016 in many tangible ways. But how do you account for the fact that a 2017 processor provides users with more value? In general, statisticians assume the difference in value between the two models is just the difference in their prices. If, say, the 2017 processor costs twice as much as the 2016 one does, then selling one 2017 processor counts as selling two of the 2016 versions in the statisticians’ books."
https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
It's vaguely reminiscent of the claim that inflation data is understated because computers at the same price have gotten better... except opposite. There's no adjustment for quality in the sense that a quality improvement without a change in price is estimated & counted. It's only if the processor's actual price doubles — i.e. it brings in twice as much revenue!
Is that even something we observe in computers to a significant extent? Even if it is, is it a bad thing? If homes increase in size by 50%, simultaneously increase in price by 50%, and an equal quantity of them are sold, is home production not up 50%?
This feels like an argument that automation in manufacturing has only increased because the distribution of production has shifted towards the highly automated semiconductor industry, but it's couched in a bizarre claim that increases in monetary value of output for the computer industry just don't count.
In the same period (2000-2018) that real manufacturing output increased 10%, US real GDP doubled.
China went from an economy of $1 trillion (1999) to ~$14 trillion (2019) at warp speed. It's the largest economic expansion, in the shortest amount of time, that has ever occurred.
South Korea has a good economy with a seemingly bright future, however it's still only a $1.5t economy today. That's sub 2% of global GDP.
The US post civil war industral boom (~1890-1930) and Japan from 1970 to 1995 ($200b to $5.5t), would be the two closest, most recent comparable extreme booms. Japan of course topped out in 1995 and in real terms has never surpassed that economic output since.
When you add $13 trillion in manufacturing-tilted economic output in 20 years, it's going to be very likely to dent the largest manufacturing economy at that point in time (the US). Considering the huge scale of that Chinese expansion, the US weathered it remarkably well and continued to expand its economy while retaining one of the highest GDP per capita output figures. I'd argue it harmed Europe far more than the US, suppressing their growth to a far greater degree than the US (the US economy has continued to grow over the last 15-20 years consistently, Europe has struggled to produce any net growth in the last ~12 years). Over those 20 years China rapidly built out a massive technology sector, with global giants, Europe has badly failed at keeping pace with the US and China on that front (one of the reasons Europe's growth has been so poor over recent decades).
In that context, basically everything we've done so far is basically warm up. Like 2% of US electrical production is from solar. We're gonna need to install like 25-100x the current installation base to do what we want.
A reasonable assumption to make is that by the time the USA gets around to doing that, most other rich countries will be doing that too. This means that global supply is going to be challenged. This means that having the domestic capacity to grow this production is key. This means that being somewhat inefficient at this stage to build knowledge-base and competency in key parts of the supply and operations chain may actually be the long-term optimal solution.
Of course, this is all just conjecture.
We’re at the order of magnitude where widespread deployment is inevitable. It took a lot of learning curve to get there, there’s barely another order of magnitude left to be had.
There are also the supporting infrastructure that needed to get there, such as battery/storage tech and smarter grids to handle the variable load.
Governments around the world have put hundreds of billions of dollars into solar R&D. Last year we had 500GW of solar and 600GW of wind, and added 100GW of solar. We should add more than 100GW of new generation to that this year. It’s pretty good progress!
I think global generation is about 15TW, and of course solar doesn’t generate 24/7, so there’s plenty of room to grow.
It also panders to rural extractives and low complexity manufacturing so there may be demagoguery to this massive stupidity.
One way to look at is that it's often cheaper to export inputs (cells) for foreign assemble and then reimport the outputs, even if tariffs are not a factor in the location of the inputs. I believe steel or aluminum or oil is similar in that taw materials are mined/extracted somewhere, sent elsewhere for processing, and then finished products sent back. You yourself might have once sent a piece of equipment or repair via mail order, or sent your children away temporarily for education?
* parts can be imported tariff free into the US to be used to manufacturer cells
* cells get exported back out to other countries (to enable the tariff free importing of the parts).
* cells are then assembled into a final product over seas
* the final product is imported tariff-free due to being manufactured in the US.
Is that correct? Because if so that's hilarious and horrifying at the same time!