...It’s disingenuous for the U.S. to accuse China of subsidizing manufacturing when we were essentially doing the same thing. The administration has accused China of dumping solar panels on the market, attempting to gain market share through subsidized manufacturing, thereby driving competitors out of business. That, though, is exactly what the administration was doing in the Solyndra debacle. There was, as Berezow and Campbell point out, one key difference:
The only real crime here is that China picked the right technology while all the wonks in Obama’sEnergy Department consistently picked the wrong ones. Kudos to the technocrats in Beijing.
As I noted at the time of Solyndra’s collapse, the administration lost sight of what its solar development program should have been. Rather than funding basic research that could advance solar technology, it became focused on short-term job creation — those elusive yet oh-so-appealing “green jobs” — and wound-up making wrong-way bets that left the U.S. solar industry at the mercy of the Chinese.
Import tariffs can’t hide that ugly truth.
Chasing the green jobs rainbow was a huge mistake and it was not just with solar panels. We also wasted money on battery manufacturers for all those electric cars that people don't want. Apparently, the plan was to have electric cars powered by solar energy . It was a scheme that did not work.
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