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Is there anything to the notion that the Trump administration putting a 30% tariff on imported solar panels is an attempt to bolster the coal or other fossil fuel industry?

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Probably not. Trump didn't put these tariffs in place, he renewed tariffs Obama had put in place. I think those tariffs are more about protecting American manufacturing.

That's not true, the tariffs put in place by the Obama administration were targeting only chinese imports (because of suspected subsidies by the Chinese state), Trumps tariffs target every import.

I appreciate the correction, I didn't know that change was part of it. It still sounds reasonable to believe it's more about manufacturing than about coal. Not saying I agree with it, I don't like it, I want to encourage solar and wind, but I get the desire to protect American workers.

Unfortunately there aren't very many American solar manufacturing jobs. According to the SEIA, only about 2,000 Americans are employed in solar manufacturing:

"The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, said Monday that Trump's decision will kill American manufacturing jobs, not create them. The trade group said that of the 38,000 solar manufacturing jobs in the U.S., only 2,000 involve making cells and panels, which are covered by Trump's import tax. The other 36,000 manufacturing jobs involve other equipment used on large solar farms and rooftop solar installations."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/01/22/tru...

That still doesn't mean that the tariff isn't meant to help American manufacturing, of course, but it does so while harming the rest of the American solar industry. The people I know who work in solar energy were advocating for a subsidy for American panels to make them competitive with Chinese ones as that would benefit the entire US solar industry.

Doesn't the change make it easier for new solar manufacturing businesses to open?

It could, but most analyses I've read don't portray it as likely. The tariffs start at 30% but fade to 15% over the next 4 years, after which they are set to expire. It doesn't seem like anyone would be able to set up and launch a solar manufacturing plant and business in such a short time.

Yet, most workers in the industry are not in manufacturing, but in installation.

That said, it's hard to know if Trump is just stupid or willfully trying to support coal and gas :)

I sometimes wonder if this is actually damaging to American infrastructure in the same way that tariffs on RAM were to the US computing industry back in the day. The problem with RAM was that the cost of manufacturing required huge amounts of capital -- capital that was not forthcoming because the Japanese had already sewn up the market. I see a parallel here with solar panels and the Chinese. As solar becomes more popular (and it will), the capital cost required to stay competitive in the market will rise. Is there any US money available? If not, then you are simply making solar power more expensive -- and probably ultimately hurting your other manufacturing industries by taking away a future power source.

The one place I see the US having a lot of standing is in batteries. If I was planning strategy for the US, I would go "all in" with that. You already have a few capital rich players who are willing to invest in the technology. It is likely that batteries will be necessary in the mid term (though, I'm not certain how feasible chemical batteries will end up being long term). If the US decides to own that area, they can be competitive. If they decide to wait, then I suspect it will be too late (because it will become too capital intensive and too risky to go up against the established players).

Long story short: History will repeat itself and the US needs to be careful not to arrogantly ignore opportunities assuming that they can walk in and take over later.

There are U.S. solar panel manufacturers who were suffering due to the flooding of the market by Chinese imported panels. Is it possible for the man to do anything that won't be seen as evil? If solar is important to you, you should be happy to foster domestic capability, just as we foster domestic food production with farm and dairy subsidies. If you are a big-government type person, as most Trump critics are, this sort of federal level economic shaping should be something you can get behind.

How about if I'm a globalist neoliberal who's also an environmentalist? "Fostering domestic capability" is nice, let's do that by investing in basic research, not by putting artificial barriers around us.

Actually, the US has an entity called the Department of Energy that does foster solar research. [1] If you're not US based, you may not know about this.

[1] https://energy.gov/science-innovation/energy-sources/renewab...

OK, so if that's really what we're interested in, increase its funding. Don't artificially slow the rollout of solar panels with trade barriers.

The atmosphere won't wait for us.

>There are U.S. solar panel manufacturers who were suffering due to the flooding of the market by Chinese imported panels

That's a loaded assertion at best. There were some solar panel companies that failed, but many that did not. According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, these two manufacturers failed because of poor business decisions that left them making products that the market did not want.

There's zero support for the notion that it was "Chinese" flooding, there were manufacturers from many other countries that were meeting the US market demand were Suniva and SolarWorld failed.

   > There's zero support for the notion that it was "Chinese" flooding

You'll have to take that up with Obama then, since it was his administration that specifically targeted China. It's amusing that I'm being attacked by both people who say the flooding was done not only by China and also people who say it was only by China. I think my main sin was implying on this board that Trump did something that wasn't evil.

The Obama tariffs on flooding were back in 2012, not now (and in the original HN discussion on this, I posted about them).

Further, these new tariffs apply to Mexico and Canada, and will likely be world wide, or at least will need to be since there is global competition, not just Chinese competition.

I'm opposed to these tariffs not because of Trump, because of the specifics on the ground. Citing Obama's tariffs and not recognizing that they are different tariffs, in different situations, is needless politicization.

So in lieu of innovation the solution is to tax competitors? That doesn't exactly sound like a sustainable path forward - what would be the incentive for domestic manufacturers to innovate the price downward if there's a safety net preventing any real competition to force them to do so?

They do compete against each other. They also compete with other forms of energy generation. Did you think there was only a single company in USA that made solar panels?

Not sure how you came to that conclusion that I believe one company manufactures panels in the U.S. but, for the sake of argument, if 30% more than foreign solar panels is the best price we can come up with than 1) that's not working and 2) a tariff will not solve pricing it only removes competition. Again, if they do not have to worry about lower-price competition, what incentive would U.S. manufacturers have to lower prices aside from a lack of demand? You seem to only be concerned about manufacturers in your statement and not the general public using these panels.

If the goal is to reduce market flooding by subsidized Chinese panels, why not just apply tariffs to Chinese imports (like the EU does). Trump's tariffs apply to all imports.

    If you are a big-government type person, as most 
    Trump critics are, this sort of federal level 
    economic shaping should be something you can get 
    behind.

This is a fallacy. Here's a similar one to point it out: "If you are a person who likes rainy weather, the hole in your roof should be something you can get behind."

Specifically, just because someone supports the notion of a large federal government to tackle large problems, does not mean they should support the idea of a large federal government for any arbitrary reason.

That's true in theory, but rarely in practice. I'm surprised to meet a real life big-gov proponent that is against government interference in the free market. You are truly a black swan.

I never said I was a big-government proponent, I just pointed out that your attack against them was fallacious.

And you’re repeating the same logical fallacy (false equivalence [0]).

To elaborate a bit, an average big-government proponent might support taxing cigarettes.

I doubt you’d find a big-government supporter who would support banning all goods that werent produced by companies with an even number of letters in their name.

Both of those examples are of government intervention in the market, but one is clearly absurd. Not all government intervention is equivalent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

   > I never said I was a big-government proponent, I just 
   > pointed out that your attack against them was fallacious.

You didn't? Hmmm, well, somebody did. Either you edited or I confused you with them. Fine, you're not big gov, that's good. You and I are on the same team.

Your strawman refutations are not convincing. I would rather you managed to pull up examples that a government might actually in good faith propose, to attempt to fix a perceived economic shortcoming, but that would still be opposed by our hypothetical (not you apparently) big-gov proponent.

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