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President Biden announces a series of tariffs on green energy products from China. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’m not precisely sure where I stand on this, but I understand the primary policy arguments for this decision would be something like this:

The problem comes later, when a specific actor has an outsized market share and then exploits their trade advantage for other concessions.

It also prohibits domestic competition for those products, especially in countries with high standards of living and wages. This negates competition and innovation, since most corporations don’t have the ability to compete with an entity with the capacity to eat cost like the Chinese government.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

The point of trade decisions, is to import products you don't have enough domestic production to cover the demand for.

We know that the US auto and oil industries have no sincere desire to build EVs anyway (or any green industry whatsoever), because they did their best to kill their domestic production of EVs in the 90s, and there's no US industry for solar panels.

This is all just part of the US's trade war with China, that is prioritizing the profits of its auto and oil industries over the wellbeing of the environment, and the desires of its citizens for electric vehicles.