China has sharply ramped up its production of cheap electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries just as the Biden administration has pushed through legislation supporting many of those same industries in the United States. ⠀
Chinese automaker BYD had recently introduced an electric SUV at the “astonishingly low” price of $14,000. China’s auto industry poses an “existential threat” to U.S. carmakers, the report argued. ⠀
After more than a decade of subsidizing its automakers, China has built a substantial car industry that accounts for 60% of global electric vehicle sales, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. ⠀
Yellen highlighted the Biden administration’s concerns by recalling a visit a week earlier to Suniva, a solar cell manufacturer in Norcross, Georgia.
The company “was once forced to close down, like other companies across a number of industries, because it could not compete against large quantities of goods that China was exporting at artificially depressed prices,” Yellen said. ⠀
China hasn’t committed to any steps to address American concerns, arguing that its cheap solar panels and other green products are helping the world wage the costly battle against climate change.
For the environment in the short term this is good, but if China succeeds in quashing US green manufacturing that won’t be good for anyone in the long run.
Especially regarding human rights.
Ed: the Chinese trolls are here in full force.
Lmfao as if the US has any grounds to talk about human rights, with its fucking constitution protecting slavery in its prisons (which, consequently, has the highest prison population in the world)
Why does it matter if US green manufacturing is quashed? You could’ve said the same thing for US dominance in the combustion car industry starting from Ford, for US dominance in the tech industry for decades, for US dominance in the media industry…
Why is green energy somehow different? Cheap Chinese solar panels and EVs decrease cost of living for Americans. They decrease inflation. The only con is that they prevent more jobs from being created in green manufacturing in the US… But even then, that’s only because the US doesn’t let Chinese companies in.
Are you that much of a corporate apologist that you would rather people starve in the name of corporate profits than buy Chinese goods?
That’s right! I’d rather die in a wet bulb event on a boiling planet before I give a single dollar to those duplicitous Chinese!! We must protect American billionaire profits, at all costs.
One country controlling the technologies of the future is definitely a bad thing. But shouldn’t the response be to invest in R&D yourself, rather than starting a trade war?