re: #293 Jay C
Yeah: even an amateur keyboard economist like me can figure out the flaw(s) in Trump’s solar-panel tariff plan. This is like 19th-Century economic doctrine: applying a tariff to foreign-made products does little good* unless there is a domestic industry in place to take advantage of the new cost/price differential. Which doesn’t seem to be the case with the solar panel industry. What it sounds like the Trump Tariff** will do is simply make solar more expensive vis-a-vis “conventional” power-generation sources: which is probably its intended effect anyway: boost economic advantage for the fossil-fuel sector, and punch those dirty “renewable”-obsessed hippies at the same time.
*outside of raising money for the government, that is.
** He probably WILL want his name on this one.
This is his master plan to bring back coal: Make it so expensive to build anything else that it becomes economically feasible to run coal-fired power plants again.