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Chinese-backed companies have distinct advantages over competitors in the U.S., such as heavily subsidized supply chains for raw polysilicon and unfinished solar modules, as well as low-cost government financing.
U.S.-based Convalt, for example, is struggling to bring online 10 GW of U.S. capacity at a factory it started building in upstate New York in 2022.
“If we are to succeed, we need American manufacturers like Convalt to survive this onslaught of low prices, to build factories with capacities that allow us to compete against the largest global firms, with Chinese beneficial ownership,” CEO Hari Achuthan said
This is one of the many reasons it is a bad idea to privatize utilities/infrastructure. That said, U.S. subsidies helped destroy economies across the globe (like Jamaica’s dairy farmers via world bank loan rules), so it is basically ‘fair play’ for China to play a similar game.
So let’s take all those oil and gas subsidies and transfer them to domestic green tech.
We can’t do that, it would upset our good friends the Saudis
“Heavily subsidized supply chains”
Let’s just call it what it is: economies of scale. China makes up 80% of the polysilicon market. The US? Barely 5%. Scale is the strongest subsidy of them all.
Yes but it’s not like they woke up one day and had all of the market. The state made a conscious effort to invest heavily in building capacity in this sector even if it meant flooding the market. And now they are global leaders with a massive market share.
There’s nothing stopping the US from doing the same thing other than liberalism.
I genuinely do not care who owns the factory as long as it creates jobs.
You should definitely care if only the intranationally owned factories are struggling. Means that they are doing something wrong.
Capitalism, survival of the fittest, free market, cut the laggards, etc…
I’m paranoid that if/when governments get in an argument, foreign infrastructure will either shut off or escalate pricing such that the public suffers (and yells at their local leaders to ‘do something!’).
These are factories in the US. The worst case is, the US seizes and nationalizes them. Wouldn’t be the first time.
True, but I’d still rather infrastructure to be publicly held utilities. Energy suppliers are a strange case because any company can become part of the grid, but the power lines to our homes are generally controlled by one entity. I want at least that entity to be responsive to the public, but I also don’t want random suppliers taking down the grid.
