President Biden announces a series of tariffs on green energy products from China.

We can’t let stopping climate change get in the way of capitalism!

That's protectionism, not capitalism.
- Tomato, tomato. The free market is a myth, there is no part of the economy that goes without manipulation. Anytime business owners can’t directly manipulate the market themselves they bribe governments to do it on their behalf.
- That's no true Scotsman.
- Ooh, good point.

These go right against our goals to increase use of solar and EVs. ☹️

Really important for world emissions for the US specifically to transition to EVs too, considering it has the highest per capita road emissions in the world.
- Most of that is because we truck everything and trains only get used for extreme bulk like coal
It does sadly. On the flip side, China seems to be trying to capture car manufacturing markets by subsidizing their producers. This would probably be a bad thing in the future if allowed. Hopefully the US government does more work on making it easier to purchase electric cars in the US(specifically the price) while also reducing the need for driving.
- What exactly is wrong with a country subsidizing green energy products? Not only that, but making them available cheaply to other countries?
- Also no US auto-manufacturer is going all in on EVs, they're all mostly building gas-guzzling oversized trucks and SUVs. US automakers intentionally killed EVs in the 90s, and hoped no other country would start building them.
- While true, the cost differentials go much deeper, and they affect all products & services.
  Michael Hudson: America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism
I'd rather we ensure higher standards of safety and quality for our vehicles, which are already terrifying death machines, but the hit to solar is a real step backwards.
- That's a cop out. Cars aren't getting registered without meeting safety requirements.

That's not how you ensure America leads the world in them. That's how you ensure corps feel safe not doing shit to innovate anymore. This is just another form of a bailout.

Didn't they do the same for Japanese goods back in the day? Not sure it helped the American automotive industry.
Doesn't China subsidize what they export on top of having cheap labor? In that case a free market argument cannot really be made. The innovation in the US or elsewhere would have to be extreme shifts to compete.
Yes- it's the United States

also Biden 🤡

This is the top response on Twitter now.
- I'm surprised they haven't deleted it, but I guess that would be even more embarrassing since it's already archived.

these actions already admit defeat

Are iphones tariffed as well? It's also from China
- Technically. However, the end product is sold by a US company, so from the gov. POV it is fine.
  Banning chinese manufactured products would mean banning a huge portion of the domestic market.

Interesting word choice. China wants to "dominate", the US wants to "lead".

You can't say the quiet part out loud.
I mean, of course there’s loaded language in all this. Are you also surprised at the language and rhetoric used by Chinese government and media sources when they talk about the US?
- I don't tend to see that stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Wow, does that mean we are ramping up domestic production for these? No? Oh...

Classic Ronco politics
US EV companies are canceling production

The rest of the world will get cheaper solar panels and EVs, that's quite nice.

Cheap panels are tanking European competitors, but it's probably too late to intervene at this point. Can't compete with work camps and cheap slave labor.
- Correct... using work camps and cheap slave labour was only acceptable when US companies shipped production to China and pocketed the profits... now that China is doing it directly, it's certainly a problem we all care about
- There are parts of the world not EU and US. They would all benefit from cheap panels.
  But EU and US are not really important: https://www.statista.com/statistics/668749/regional-distribution-of-solar-pv-module-manufacturing/ they account only for few percent of solar photovoltaic module production.

You want Amerikkka to lead maybe subsidize EVs as well?

Why can't we all win? (Ide rather bus/rail and walkable cities)

The government does subsidize EVs.
Additionally even used EVs are subsidized.
Between federal and state tax credits, as well as utility company rebates, my folks just got over 5k back for a used Nissan leaf. They were able to trade in their old clunker, netting a profit of a few hundred dollars to upgrade to a practical used EV.

Also medical supplies, including masks, because COVID is Joever.

Edit to add: There is necessarily a lag between tariff imposition and indigenous production, and we’re left to fill that gap with our own wallets individually. Worse, the prices will almost definitely never come back down as they might in theory, because this is late-stage capitalism.

It'd be really funny if those raw milk drinkers started a bird flu pandemic during a medical PPE shortage 😂

America can't compete with China and American corps cried for daddy.

The free market in action.
- The free market inaction
  FTFY
Oh we could but then the executive class would have to forgo their 8th Yacht.
- so u cant because the "executive class" (capitalist they are called capitalist) control everything, u theoretically COULD if u had a revolution but u CANT.
The innovation will be bred any minute now

Swiggity swooty the oil lobby is coming for your booty

Heezul Schneezul, the future is diesel.
- Disease-al
Funds raised will be used to offset further increases in subsidies to the domestic oil industry
- In all honesty they could use this tax and an extra oil tax to subsidise the shit out of solar and EVs

What a bell-end. Maybe instead of tariffs the US should begin vesting in education, job training, and research into these sectors so it can compete instead of trying to hobble the competition in the domestic market. This is just protectionism by a different name

That takes too long, Ford wants money now

We should just be buying solar panels as cheap as we can, as fast we can who gives a fuck if they "dominate" the net positive is worth it

This is the trumpiest shit ever.

For every voter who wants a habitable planet, a cheap electric car, or to catch covid less we lose, we're gonna pick up two moderate republicans!

A) Moderate
B) republican
Pick one
- That's the joke.
  There's a total of about 10 never-trump-republicans, and all of them have jobs at NYT, CNN, or MSNBC telling their audience that all the bad things Biden does are electorally smart because there's a bunch of moderate republican swing voters who will choose diet-fascism over the real thing.
  This is the same tack they took in 2016, from Chuck Schumer going "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin" to every pundit saying "suberban women are going to decide this election" and using that to explain why generally unpopular policies are electorally smart.
- He's making fun of Chuck Schumer "quote"

Steel I get. That's an environmental issue since US creation is way more carbon friendly. However the rest makes no sense without an announcement in domestic investment that is pulled from currently used non-environmental budgets.

They already put 6.1 billion into domestic silicon fabs this year and gave out a $362 million dollars loan to bolster domestic EV production while giving the solar industry 7 billion in grants.
- And did that money go directly into production?
  Or did it pad some folks pockets?
- Wait we gave the Auto industry money for EVs and 50k SUVs were the result? Holy shit, that's right up there with giving 4 billion to the telecoms for no actual network expansion.
- This is helpful, thank you.
- No nearly enough to fight the petroleum machine.
Pretty sure the steel tariff is a bad thing too. There are certain grades of steel that just aren't produced in the US. People threw a fit over it when trump did the same thing.

Repeatedly stomping on my collection of rakes to own the commies

This dude really does not want to get reelected again. I hate that he's the only choice. What a piece of shit.

"No" is always an option.
- I'm not an accelerationist, so no, it's not really an option. It's cool that you feel like you have the ability to just say "no", but I don't. I have to live here, and if Trump gets elected then there is a very high chance I might find myself in a concentration camp before the end of his term, assuming he doesn't find a way to abolish elections entirely.
  So no, I don't really have an option to just shove my thumb up my ass and refuse to vote.
  Edit: Sorry about the double post, Lemmy was being weird.

hell yea FUCK the environment lmao

If hes going to do that he should light a fire under the domestics asses to get our own evs up to snuff. And market competitive. None of that whining how it cannot be done either

Yup if he's serious then the next move is to turn the Big 3 into the Big 6.
- Why would the main benefactors and purchasers of this policy position (the Big 3) greenlight their destruction? This is US capitalist policy at play. They can't compete internationally and had to purchase their domestic protection.
Yes. Also, I'd rgue the solar panels are the bigger issue since EVs are a marginal improvement for the climate vs clean energy and biking/walking.

It's ok.. the consumer will ultimately pay that tariff.

Don't worry about it! Some intrepid American entrepreneur will simply begin producing American EVs immediately.
If modern politics has taught us anything, all you need to do is drop-kick the first domino and the Free Market will do exactly what you want it to do every time with zero follow-up. Society is completely linear like that.
Lmao yeah that's how tariffs work...

Man what a fucking idiot.

Trump can't campaign so Biden's doing his job for him.

Can someone explain to me how tariffs help us? Couldn’t I buy a Chinese EV cheaper if there were no tariffs.?

Correct. If there were no tariffs, you could buy a chinese EV for cheap. In this case for so cheap that the domestic US/Non-Chinese market cannot compete. So in order to protect these markets, the product needs to be made artificially more expensive with tariffs. This way, the domestic markets have a chance of competing.
However, this also isolates the country and provokes retaliation from the other side. This usually results in both sides sabotaging their trade relations with each other (for ex. with tariffs) which is called a trade war.
- I would be surprised if China cares too much, there is the rest of the world that needs small cheap EVs and solar panels. But they must do something as response, that's diplomacy.
  I also don't see the problem to put tariffs to protect domestic products, sometimes it is necessar, but prohibiting completely is not cool.
It doesn't help you.
It helps Elon.
- Yeah. That was my biggest gripe actually 😆🫠
We have a number of subsidies for domestic EV production. That will all be a waste if China's subsidized EVs undercut the domestic market. This is consistent with a broader effort to boost domestic manufacturing. While at odds with efforts to promote the adoption of green technologies, the administration is trying to strike a balance between competing interests, in this instance balancing consumer access to green tech with job growth, domestic manufacturing, and less reliance on China for critical technologies.

That's... That's not how any of this works.

As a hobbiest, I make things out of steel and aluminum. Can't wait to pay more.

Yeah, screw Biden at this point. He's basically 2016 Trump on so many policies. 2024 Trump is going to be worse but so what.

Yeah, screw Biden at this point. He’s basically 2016 Trump on so many policies. 2024 Trump is going to be worse but so what.
You might want to spend a wee bit more time educating yourself on these issues. Because you are so horribly wrong it's not even funny.
- Not at all. Stop being brainwashed. Voted for him in the past. Won't again.

nice now the all the cartels will start wheeling and dealing cpus and evs woo woo..

3 out of the 5 things have nothing to do with green energy.

Let's get a tarrif on major grocery and supply chain vendors at home first.

Just what I need, a larger grocery bill

So end H1B visas and refocus tax dollars on infrastructure and education you fucking prick.

I know for sure he's doing the infrastructure part, but I'm not paying close enough attention to say anything about the other two.

This is what we needed to encourage the fascist Biden vote!

It will do wonders!

What an awful god damn tweet. Are the tariffs to combat Chinese governmental meddling? If so, great. If not then they’re protectionist stupidity that’s sure to draw a response. This tweet sure makes it sound like it’s the latter. sigh