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Trump didn't create this dispute--it has been ongoing for years, and Obama imposed tariffs on solar imports from China too.

China subsidizes solar and nearly all US manufacturers have been forced to move plants to compete, declare bankruptcy or shutdown.

The question is: after China obtains a stronghold in this market... then what? The Chinese subsides will eventually be removed, and solar panels will return to their natural price--but with all of the supply chain, supplies for materials, r&d, knowhow, etc centralized in and around China.. making it hard for non-Chinese companies to compete.

So look further out--when China no longer subsidizes solar... is that good for the US economy?

But are unilateral tariffs like this one actually helpful in combatting this?

Yes, if China had subsidized the US installation of massive new electrical power generation capacity independent of fossil fuels that would last decades, that would have been good for the US economy. It isn't that simple to raise prices on durable productive goods — your customers have to compete against the people who bought the same goods last year at a lower price.

As for the "natural price", the only significant irreducible cost to producing silicon photovoltaic panels is the price of energy itself. Everything else is either literally dirt cheap (silica, alumina, trace quantities of phosphorus) or can be amortized over arbitrarily large production volumes (giant molybdenum crucibles, FIB lithography machines, Ph.D. physicists). In the limit where solar panels are abundant, the "natural price" for solar panels is very nearly the price of the sand they are made from.

Allowing China this type of business hegemony is a strategic mistake.

That's what Perón said here about US air conditioners. Now it's 70 years later and look how far we've come at not tolerating US business hegemony in air conditioner manufacturing! Nearly all air conditioners sold in Argentina are Argentine. Very nearly no Argentine air conditioners are sold anywhere else in the world, even in neighboring countries. BECAUSE THEY SUCK.

Doesn’t this ultimately raise the price of solar in the US though? Either buy from established Chinese factories at a tarrif adjusted price, or buy from less established US manufacturers at the price they can manage - a higher price than the Chinese factories.

One could imagine instead that the US government competes with China by providing its own solar subsidies. Of course, the republicans would rather the price of solar go up and the government spend money on green energy subsidies...

But it’s clear that making the US competitive in solar isn’t the sole motivation here.

Anti-dumping duties on solar have been around for a while, up to ~150%! https://www.metalbulletin.com/Article/3365766/US-imposes-new...

> China subsidizes solar and nearly all US manufacturers have been forced to move plants to compete

Incidentally, the "US manufacturers" supporting this tariff are owned by Chinese and German parent companies.

A 30% margin is probably good enough to build a fully automated solar cell fab locally.

Trump is just trying to hurt solar, because he is paid by the dying coal industry. But he can't stop the inevitable, maybe slow it down slightly.

The fossil fuel industry basically can hurt the US at this point and they will hurt the US. While everywhere else is starting to head frantically for the exits. China, Europe, India, and bunch of African countries have make commitments toward solar, wind, and transportation electrification.

China's banking system is loaning scads of money to solar manufacturers while in the US the banking system has loaned $1T to fracking, oil and gas companies.

It's also real-politik. CN is trying to corner the market on PV production. Obama supported fracking to punish Putin (RUS is a petro-state). There's more going on than what is read in the NYT. Take your area of expertise and go read about what is written in non-academic settings on the subject. Then realize that this isn't a one-off for your area of expertise. This. is. Everywhere.

Oh sure, kinda brain dead can't adapt to the new post cold war order of things legacy real-politik. Makes sense if your power and status makes sense in terms of cold war conflict.

But the Soviet Union is gone. The neoliberal transformation of Russia is a utter failure. The fossil fuel industry is walking dead at this point do to solar, wind, electrified transportation and the imperative to deal with global warming.

It's a classic people and organizations looking out for their short term interest + risk aversion leads to eventual catastrophe.

And as I mentioned, countries whose leadership have no particular interest in legacy cold war real politik or the Wests fossil fuel hegemony[1] are going to move and move fast.

[1] Other countries leaders absolutely despise being beholden to the oil/gas/fossil fuel industry.

The world is a complex place. In your analysis, do you think there is anything that you may have overlooked? Is it possible?

> Obama supported fracking to punish Putin

That is untrue, President Obama hated fracking and did much to discourage it.

> That is untrue, President Obama hated fracking and did much to discourage it.

Maybe he said he hated it. I am not sure about the "did much to discourage" part.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/...

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The fracks occurred in at least 630 different wells off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (see interactive map), and many took place in critical habitat for imperiled loggerhead sea turtles. Oil companies were also allowed to dump about 76 billion gallons of waste fluid into Gulf waters in 2014.

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Not only that, his administration approve fracking with no site-specific analysis of the threats to the environment and also without public involvement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/us/politics/hydraulic-fra...

He tried and got struck down. He did what he could without Congress to help.

Taxes imposed on import do not hurt solar, as much as they will help the American solar industry. Tons of American solar companies have nearly been brought to bankruptcy because china is massively subsidizing the export of solar panels.

This problem is also magnified by the fact that Warren Buffet has been using his influence to encourage states to charge panel owners fees relating to grid usage that weren't there prior, as there is a cost associated with continuously switching which direction power from a given houses is flowing.

Yeah it's weird to me that this article didn't talk about China's dumping of solar panels. Bloomberg has other recent articles talking about it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-21/trump-chi...

Reeks of "Trump is for it so it's must be bad" issue that has plagued journalism since he took office.

There's pros and cons to this method of fighting dumping but it's certainly a good thing for American solar panel manufacturers just not the installers (in the short term at least).

>Taxes imposed on import do not hurt solar, as much as they will help the American solar industry.

What's backing up this claim? Because not only is this at a glance in violation of several trade agreements the U.S. has made internationally, it also defies core theories and principles that have fueled the last several decades of trade law and agreements [1].

This absolutely REEKS of the typical bullshit the right+ in this country like to put out every time they're elected while also dripping with short sighted protectionism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_histo...

China has much better chances of fully automating their solar cell manufacturing, because they are selling worldwide and so have much higher volumes. Presumably the dramatic declines in cost we've seen over the last few years are in large part due to this phenomenon. The US solar-cell manufacturers will remain in the same kind of high-cost, low-quality ghetto that Argentine air-conditioner manufacturers are in.

Trump can definitely cause the inevitable to leave the US playing catch-up in the 2030s, unless he's out of office soon.

Having a fully automated solar cell fab locally would be wonderful. We'd reduce the need for big ships burning sulphur-rich heavy bunker fuel oil. We'd be more resistant to China cutting us off without warning, as they did for rare-earth metals. Even a lights-out factory sometimes needs workers, so that is at least a few jobs.

If you want a coal-related motive, try the obvious: Pennsylvania is an important swing state. Mines are hiring again, for both miners and engineers.

Shipping solar panels overseas is not a significant source of bunker-fuel emissions, and it probably never will be. Complete solar panel modules, without legs, weigh about 10kg per kilowatt: https://www.amazon.com/ECO-WORTHY-10pcs-Watts-Module-System/.... So each TEU of solar panels contains about 2.2 megawatts of generating capacity at 22 tonnes net per TEU. If the world installs 150 gigawatts of new solar capacity in 2018, that's about 70000 TEUs.

The Emma Maersk carries 11000 TEUs on every voyage, so the amount of solar panels that will be installed worldwide in 2018 is about 6 shiploads.

What about the future, when photovoltaic becomes the dominant source of marketed energy? According to the IEO, current total world marketed energy consumption is 20 terawatts (20'000 gigawatts), which would amount to about 90 million TEUs, or 8000 shiploads. Call it 30000 shiploads to account for photovoltaic's low capacity factor, typically in the 20%–30% range (though we can expect that to become more efficient as development moves to more equatorial areas with less clouds).

There are currently about 9000 container ships in operation, so current world marketed energy consumption is about three trips for the world's shipping fleet, in the form of photovoltaic panels.

Total container shipping volume is already about 470 million TEUs per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Container_ports

We can presumably expect panels to become smaller and lighter as time goes on, further decreasing the energy needed for shipping, and eventually the proliferation of solar panels will depress the price of energy so low that not even bunker fuel can compete with syngas, at which point the bunker fuel emissions problem will be over.

(Edited to correct order-of-magnitude calculation error.)

I've wondered about the fuel for large cargo ships. From my understanding, freight train engines are basically gas powered generators to produce 480v output to power an electric engine. Not my area of expertise, but this is supposed to be much more fuel efficient than straight combustible engine power.

If that is the case, why would this not work for cargo ships as well?

Converting energy from chemical to electric then mechanical is only beneficial if you need a high torque at low rpm, like to start moving a train. Otherwise its more efficent to directly convert from chemical to mechanical.

Diesel-electric locomotives convert from mechanical energy to electricity and back, which is reasonably efficient, but not 100% efficient. I don't know what efficiencies they get, but at small scales it's easy to hit 88% round-trip efficiency. The advantage is that, like a Prius, you can run the internal-combustion engine always at its optimal efficiency point, whether the train is going full speed or at literally zero speed. Internal combustion engines run extremely poorly at zero speed.

Ship screws, on the other hand, can be designed to run at nearly any speed at all, and nearly all the time the ship is moving at exactly the same speed. So the screws are just coupled directly to the crankshaft of a two-stroke diesel engine the size of a fucking church which remains powered on for years at a time, always running at whatever speed it damn well pleases.

That depends on how long the tariff is in place. It's useless if it's gone by the time you actually get your fab up and running...

Having a big installed base of low op-ex power generation will be handy as prices fall, but panels installed now won't be the thing setting those mid 2020s prices.

I'm not posting in support of tariffs, I just don't see the connection between spending now (at today's panel prices and resultant kw-h/dollar) and lower future electricity prices.

I agree, what matters isn't so much the tariffs on the relatively small amount of photovoltaic panels installed in 2018, but the tariffs on the much larger amount installed in 2021–2027.

> new energy-intensive industries will become economically feasible, opening up vast new areas of the economy.

This is a very exciting idea that never occurred to me. We always talk about the challenges facing solar regarding residential use. But a factory could schedule its operations for peak solar or even relocate entirely to places with reliable, consistent solar power. Very interesting.

It's been suggested. The problem is that having to run only during the day, and perhaps only in certain seasons, is a huge impediment to most of the applications you could think of because most energy intensive processes tend to be capital intensive as well.

For instance, I did some cursory analysis on building a chemical plant to do ammonia production in order to take advantage of the negative energy costs that were available in some parts of CA for hours a day thanks to a combination of the duck curve and the overcapacity at Oroville. When you're only running things 2-8 hours a day, you are amortizing the fixed costs over a much smaller output than something running constantly. Even getting paid several cents per kwh to take energy off the grid, it seemed hard to turn a profit.

Based on your username, I’m imagining Billy Quizboy reading out your post.

What if you factor in storage? If your paid to take energy off grid you can store it and still potentially run 24/7.

It doesn't help. You'd account for the storage at opportunity cost (you could sell it back to the grid at night rather than using it). So you'd get the same economics as just pulling power off the grid 24/7. At least for this application, the output was worth less than the marginal cost of the electricity during the more normal periods. If you kept it running like that, you'd be showing a loss even before amortizing the CapEx, so running it constantly would produce worse results.

Aren't many energy intensive processes like aluminum smelting and Bitcoin mining already relying on low cost hydroelectric power.

General argument is that we're running out of those due to either natural processes or political processes. We aren't making new dams due to environmental concerns. We aren't even creating dams as a means to sustain California. Instead, we shunt that water to the sea. Add to this a desertification due to global climate change, and you're needing to look elsewhere for power.

You explain yourself why these tariffs aren't that big of a deal in the long term.

>"electrical energy will become dramatically cheaper starting in the mid-2020s, at least for diurnal uses. Consequently, the prices of goods produced by energy-intensive industries, such as aluminum and solar panels, will begin to drop precipitously, and new energy-intensive industries will become economically feasible, opening up vast new areas of the economy."

Not only will the tariffs halve in four years, photovoltaic prices will substantially drop in parallel. Better to give US manufacturers a chance to reach the promised land of solar you're predicting than allow them to crumble now.

Solar cost per kWh are still prohibitive for aluminium smelting. Specially because due to the production profile you can sell the energy at much higher price than what you could get by producing aluminium.

Wind OTOH produces a lot of energy at night where demand is low and you can't really shutdown turbines - you must use the energy. Yet I'm not sure if it's feasible to run a plant in those conditions.

I think it is true everywhere in the world that photovoltaic costs per kWh are still prohibitive for aluminum smelting in 2018, but that won't still be true in 2022.

Aluminum pots are usually run off extremely consistent power sources like hydro. I'm not sure how much you have to redesign them to take effective advantage of unpredictable intermittent supplies.

Conventional reservoir-backed hydroelectric dams can be throttled up and down pretty quickly, and can't run at 100% around the clock without depleting the reservoir. The Hoover Dam has an annual capacity factor of only 23%, for example. As solar gets cheap I think that the most cost-effective way to firm it up is to install it connected to the same transmission capacity as an existing hydroelectric project, and throttle the hydro output down when solar generation is strong. There are limits to how much down you can throttle a dam of course. Still it can serve as a hybrid system that marries solar scalability and hydro reliability without paying for battery storage.

What? No. http://xn--drmstrre-64ad.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower...

Most large wind turbines have pitch control (Some newer turbines even have individual blade pitch control to counter asymmetric loads)

Not only pitch control but brakes as well

Potentially off-topic, but you brought it up: what could possibly entice you about the TPP?

Trade deals like TPP are in theory a good thing and make the world more efficient and put minimums on environmental damage and abuse of workers.

There's some real world stuff that blunts this a bit. Oligarchs can capture more than their fair share of the benefits and not recompense the direct losers (e.g. people having to change jobs and retrain and the areas they live in).

And corporate interests can take advantage of the negotiations to enshrine in what is effectively global law things that benefit them, but are a net negative for the planet e.g overly strong IP protection.

People can still think they are good overall and that the energy should be focused on fixing the bad parts or mitigating the problems.

Trump on the other hand opted out of TPP and then said he wanted to make individual deals with the same countries. This fixes none of the problems I see with TPP, probably makes them worse in fact, so even if you hate trade deals he's not actually achieved anything but a minor delay.

That was not a list of Trump-administration actions that I was opposed to; it was a list of Trump-administration actions that I think are important. I find most of them odious, but that wasn't my point.

That's why I said "potentially off-topic" - I'd like to hold you to an answer on this, if you'd be so gracious!

Tax cuts will probably steam roll any effects of this tariff for the economy (unless we see a crash relatively soon, but whatever, Dow at 26,214, why stop now?)

I don't think domestic solar panels are 30% more expensive than imports anyway, especially into the future with tax cuts, so the actual increase price paid is probably less.