Rebecca Leber at Mother Jones writes—Trump’s Job-Killing Plan to Kneecap the Solar Industry:
If President Trump were honest about which industries are the biggest job-creation powerhouses, it wouldn’t be the sluggish coal industry. It’s solar. More than twice the size of the wind industry and roughly five times bigger than the coal industry, solar accounted for one in every 50 jobs created in 2016, according to an annual census by the Solar Foundation. But Trump will soon have the chance to cut off US solar from the cheap foreign panels that have led to the industry’s booming success the past few years.
“An improper remedy will devastate the burgeoning American solar economy and ultimately harm America’s manufacturers,” said one expert.
The US International Trade Commission on Friday decided 4-0 that foreign imports of solar panels and cells have damaged the business of two domestic solar manufactures, Suniva and SolarWorld. Now that the ITC has found injury, it will likely suggest a price floor or tariffs. The decision on whether to regulate these imports will ultimately fall to Trump, and evidence suggests he’s likely to do it. “I would place the odds of the president agreeing to some type of remedy at 90 percent,” an anonymous Trump administration official told the news site Axios.
Suniva has already proposed a price floor of 78 cents per watt and a tariff that would more than double the current panel costs. Solar Energy Industries Association President Abigail Ross Hopper’s statement Friday warned that such a proposal could hobble the industry.
“Analysts say Suniva’s remedy proposal will double the price of solar, destroy two-thirds of demand, erode billions of dollars in investment and unnecessarily force 88,000 Americans to lose their jobs in 2018,” Hopper said. “An improper remedy will devastate the burgeoning American solar economy and ultimately harm America’s manufacturers and 36,000 people currently engaged in solar manufacturing that don’t make cells and panels.”
And according to Greentech Media, a tariff on imported panels wouldn’t necessarily lead to more domestic manufacturing [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Republican debate reaction: It was bad. Really, really bad:
The more pressing issue for Republicans might just be that their own conservative viewers are watching the debate and firing off emails lamenting, as above, "WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!" Well, yes. Yes you do. The tea party wing of the party has such tight control over the agenda that, as usual, any deviance from the hardest of hardline positions is tantamount to apostasy. That's why the most applauded attacks on Perry were over him being insufficiently pro-cancer, or not being sufficiently punishing of the children of illegal immigrants, and why the most rebroadcast snippets of each of the last three debates were the moments when the conservative audience (1) applauded the death penalty, (2) demanded that a hypothetical uninsured American be left to die rather than be treated, and (3) booed an active-duty soldier because he was gay.
It looks like the general GOP reactions are going to go in two different directions. A great number of Republican leaders and pundits (e.g. Mitch Daniels and the like) are still seeking an imaginary "better" candidate, someone who will save them from the current crop of ridiculous figures. Another large segment (Fox News and allies) seems to be heavily pressing for Romney to be accepted as that non-ridiculous candidate, hopefully before these debates damage his credibility beyond repair. Indeed, even the tea party seems to be begrudgingly willing to give Romney a chance, ironically because Perry is, of all things, being too moderate for them.
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