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Comment by patrickk | Hacker News Reader

Chinese price dumping from state-sponsored companies also largely wiped out the German solar PV industry[1,2]. Germany was an early innovator in solar, especially in regards to inventing the concept of a feed in tariff when solar PV was still hideously expensive, thereby driving wider adoption. Planet Money did a nice podcast on the history of it [3].

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/chinese-exports-crushing-german-solar-...

[2] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/last-major-german-solar...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797322305/episode-965-das-gre...

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>state-sponsored companies

Your comment reads as if there's something wrong with state-sponsored companies but there really aren't and everyone does this including the US and Germany. How they do it might differ but the end result is the same. Directly, tax cuts, giving foreign aid that have strings attached like the US does with almost all its "aid" ("we give you $XXX million and you agree to use it to buy from US defense contractors A, B and C" isn't aid - it is state-sponsoring of companies). It is only seen as a problem in the West when done by a country like PRC and it hurts a company in a country like the US or Germany - never the other way around. I don't know what to call it but it smells like a mix of nationalism and racism.

I think the difference is what the effect is. If China or the US or whoever subsidizes its own industry, people complain but it's not a big deal. I've never really heard any complaints about any of China's state-owned enterprises. Nobody complains that China sells electricity inside China for less than the cost of production; nobody complains about US farm subsidies. What people complain about is when it alters market dynamics. Selling solar panels below the cost of production (I assume that's what happened) upsets people.

I think Mexican corn farmers would disagree with you on US farm subsidies.

IIRC Germany, by subsidizing its solar PV industry too heavily, took the innovation pressure out of the latter. This made it way too easy for Chinese companies to take over the market.

You forgot german politicians that helped killing it, to protect the long-established energy suppliers.

Peter Altmaier is one of those politicians.

Yeah they pretty much did the same in the USA as well.

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