Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

If the cost of being able to go to Walmart, walk around and fill a cart with a bunch of cheap stuff, a lot of which is unnecessary junk, is to lose American manufacturing job, you can, to quote John Lennon "count me out".
I'm more than willing to have less stuff in my house to help my fellow countrymen get decent jobs.

This video describes my thoughts about mindless consumption.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

Cost of living can be cheap... The government just gets in the way.
When I mean cheap, I mean you won't sacrifice much if anything for the same amount of goods/services.

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

Personally, I'd like to see tariffs placed on all Chinese goods. Their government exploits their people for cheap labor so they can sell cheap junk below market value to us.

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

Whether the tariff's are good or whether they're bad, I'm really not a good enough economist to know. But what I do know is that Big Oil has got to be liking the price of solar panels going up.

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

If you want a great example of how "wonderful" tariffs are, just look at the cost of tires. Our president, as a gift to the United steelworkers union, pushed through a 35% tariff on tires from China. What was the result of this?
The price of lower end tires increased for all of us. Personally, i watched the price of the exact same tires increase over 30% in 2 years time. Obama claimed the tariff would increase jobs for American workers in the tire industry. So what happened? In 2009 there were 55,000 employed in the industry. By 2011, there were 51,700. The end result is WE pay more for our tires, and for what?
Thanks President Obama. Nice job.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Punitive tariffs rarely work, and are usually counterproductive.

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

I bet a lot of oil goes into making tires..

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

If people are driving less and tires are improving fewer tires should be needed. The question is not what happened, but what would have happened and what's going to happen.

I'm sure the actual desire was to keep cheap tires out. As we know, bad tires means more gasoline consumed so are an economic double whammy.

Punitive tariffs rarely work for the same reason that there are punitive tariffs: people cheat.

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

No, what happened is the same set of domestic tires increased in price from $59 each to $89 each. Why? Because the competition was eliminated because of the tariff, that's why. The actual desire was to give a gift to the union that gave Obama a lot of money in campaign contributions. This is not complicated. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

What was the profit margin on the tires for the US manufacturer before the tariffs were put in place?

Re: US sets tariffs for Chinese solar cells
 

As Herm already pointed out, the cost of raw materials to manufacture that tire went up a lot in the past few years.