re: Example of China's trade practices.... the takeover of Solar

I believe in free trade, and I believe that China is an untapped market and we should trade with them. I don't believe in letting them overproduce and oversupply to dominate and control. Trump is right. Short term pain, long term gain. We need to fight back.

My boss used to make me lead negotiations with them because I'm kind of a dick on those sorts of things. I wouldn't let them speak in Chinese. They'd still try to and I'd just pick random points to interrupt them with either laughing like hell or just "now you know good and well we're not going to agree to that."

I had no fricking clue what they were saying but they didn't know that. They eventually stopped speaking Chinese in meetings so it worked.

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What do you think should be done about trade practices like that?

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The OP post is all vague suggestion and generalizations.

The US should definitely be using its tax and investment power to promote the US solar industry instead of wasting money promoting coal. We could ask, Why is the US government propping up the coal industry? The sad answer is that there is a media blustery coal mine owner that Trump likes because he strokes Trump’s ego.

The better bet is solar and other alternative sources. I agree, we are falling behind due to the boneheaded Republican policies.

You don't think letting them continue to duck us is smart?

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I used to be in furniture manufacturing and watched for 10 years while red China subsided cheap, inferior production which forced 90% of domestic production to move off shore.

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The biggest lie economic conservatives have been sold is this meme that, "If China wants to subsidize production and make our goods cheaper, it's essentially foreign aid".

No. It's not. It's not foreign aid. It's an inefficient allocation of resources. It's cheaper in one area, sure, but overall the production of the economy is suppressed. This concept is the basis for trade to begin with. The most efficient producers should produce, if that's not happening, then EVERYONE is worse off. If China isn't the most efficient producer, and they need government intervention to undercut the market to be able to produce, they are creating countless iterations of deadweight loss. China needs to produce goods and services the market desires WITHOUT their government interfering. The US might never be a manufacturing power ever again, but we have so much innovation, we should be a lot closer to Germany, that is simultaneously the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe and highly developed, than we currently are.

From China's end, in the early 80s, 90% of their people lived in poverty. Now, it's less than 6%. Yet they still have nearly 600 million people living on farms. They have more people living in caves than live in Texas. They still have a long way to go to modernize. All this cheating works for them. They don't care if they are causing loss. They want to dominate. They want to undercut the market. They want to make goods cheaper at all costs so they can control. They don't care about trade that works for us and them. They only care about trade that will help them modernize and dominate, which is what they currently have. frick this stupid, "muh steel is cheaper, muh foreign aid" argument. If people think the argument ends there, they are fricking stupid.

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My case in point Robin. Thieving mfers.

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They don't see it a 'theiving', br. It's Obama's "you didn't build that" pov; ALL Intellectual Property is free game, because such can and should be either willingly given by those who posses it, or Systematically confiscated and allocated to the Needy Masses by Government Policy.

The Clintons opened up our Research to the Chinese, and Madeline Albright openly stated as much. Bill got Chinese money...many did.

It's a clash of First Principles. Will get a lot worse before getting better.

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Why didn't the U.S. invest in its renewable resource companies

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Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
Solyndra ($535 million)*
Beacon Power ($43 million)*
Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
SunPower ($1.2 billion)
First Solar ($1.46 billion)
Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
Amonix ($5.9 million)
Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
Abound Solar ($400 million)*
A123 Systems ($279 million)*
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
Johnson Controls ($299 million)
Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
ECOtality ($126.2 million)
Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
Range Fuels ($80 million)*
Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
GreenVolts ($500,000)
Vestas ($50 million)
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
Navistar ($39 million)
Satcon ($3 million)*
Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

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* denotes companies that have/had filed for bankruptcy.

That isn't our tax dollars being invested in renewable resource companies?

Those investments were done without any to very little due diligence on the part of the Obama DOE. Which is why so much was lost and I would bet very little to none of those funds were paid back. Just lined the pockets of those who received the money. Many of those companies didn't even use the money towards the solutions they received the money for.

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Why didn't the U.S. invest in its renewable resource companies when its a fact that fossil fuels are limited?

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We did, but our money ended up basically being payoffs for political support. Meanwhile the Chinese government is using their near-limitless resources to primarily keep US businesses from succeeding in the market.

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the Chinese government is using their near-limitless resources to primarily keep US businesses from succeeding in the market.

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America at large, but especially its current regime, gives zero fricks about solar energy

It's ridiculous to hate on China for taking advantage of American apathy

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It's one thing for businesses to fight for dominance of a market (Coke vs. Pepsi, for example) but it's a whole other thing entirely when a foreign government gets into the fray with their near-infinite resources.

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Why?

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Scale of resources, especially when the foreign government is more of a totalitarian regime. A business has to worry about things like profits, government regulations (federal, state and local), human resources, insurance, safety and employee moral. An entity run by a more-controlling government has to only worry about keeping their employees "properly motivated" because they have near-infinite resources to do so.