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President Biden announces a series of tariffs on green energy products from China. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago

Didn't they do the same for Japanese goods back in the day? Not sure it helped the American automotive industry.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Yes- it's the United States

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Idea of free market is that it's better than a manage market. If there's room for innovation, the free market will find it. Central planning leads to being risk adverse and exploiting inefficiencies to soak up government money. So if free market is your religion, you shouldn't be bothered that China tries to plan their production instead. Cheap labour also doesn't hold since the USA has historically been happy to have their companies contract labour from cheaper countries. So if you're losing due to Chinese salaries, just hire Chinese people.

Also, China doesn't subsidise any of these exports. Then they'd lose money, and they're exporting to earn money. They subsidise R&D and domestic sales of things that'll make domestic companies more productive and competitive.