As oil neared $100 per barrel last week, John Kerry – Joe Biden’s climate czar – whined about the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, worrying about how it would affect the world’s climate reform enthusiasm:
It could have a profound negative impact on the climate obviously. You have a war and obviously you’re going to have massive emissions consequences to the war. But equally importantly, you’re going to lose people’s focus, you’re going to lose certainly big country attention because they will be diverted and I think it could have a damaging impact.
So, you know, I think hopefully President Putin would realize that in the northern part of his country, they used to live on 66% of the nation that was over frozen land.
Now it’s thawing, and his infrastructure is at risk.And the people of Russia are at risk. And so I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.
This is the same Kerry whose stepson, Chris Heinz, was in business with Devon Archer (recently convicted) and Hunter Biden (who has no convictions). The latter clown is the reformed drug addict son of President Joe Biden. Hunter “The Punter” served on the board of Ukraine’s Burisma for some million bucks annually, while dad was U.S. Vice President.
What does any of that have to do with LG Electronics?
Kerry and Biden have been selling the public on giving up oil, which doubled its price this past year They want to replace nuclear, gasoline, coal, diesel and natural gas with solar panels and windmills (tilted and otherwise).
Solar panels are the key to their plan, but while promoting sun power, they are driving the panel factories out of America by refusing to allow reasonable trade tariffs.
The most recent victim is LG, which has announced the end of its solar panel business.
The company has assembled solar panels since 2018 at LG’s corporate campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Closing this facility impacts 160 employees and some 60 contract workers.
Why are they closing?
It’s not poor earnings. LG is a giant profitable manufacturer with factories in China and South Korea, producing tvs and home appliances sold here.
LG left the panel business here because of Biden and Congress removing part of the tariffs on solar panels imported at distress prices from Asia. A small import charge (tariff) kept the market fair for U.S. producers, and eliminating it made foreign production unstoppable.
LG’s decision comes just weeks after Biden gutted the Section 201 solar safeguard tariffs.
When President Biden gutted the 201 solar safeguard tariffs, we warned that it would result in factory closures in the U.S., the loss of American jobs, and at least 10 Gigawatts (GW) of planned manufacturing capacity would likely be canceled, according to Zach Mottl, Chairman of Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA).
Unfortunately, less than three weeks later, we are now seeing the consequences of President Biden’s disastrous decision. China sympathizers may believe that gutting the 201 solar tariffs would not affect the U.S. solar manufacturing industry as long as Congress supports domestic producers.
This is flat out wrong. Without trade remedies to level the playing field for U.S. solar manufacturers that are competing against heavily subsidized Chinese companies, it won’t matter if Congress passes a domestic tax credit for American producers.
Last month, CPA blasted Biden’s decision to exclude bifacial (two-sided) solar panels in its extension of the Section 201 solar safeguard tariffs.
That move rejected the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (ITC) unanimous and bipartisan recommendation that the 201 tariffs should be extended and include bifacial products.
The U.S. market for solar energy installations grew 43% in 2020, about 50% greater than expected, thanks to implementation of the 201 tariffs in 2017.
Bravely, several U.S. solar module manufacturers have ramped up production in the last three years under the stimulus of Section 201 tariffs on solar module imports. U.S producers achieved a ten-year high in U.S. market share of 19.8% in 2019.
But even human rights issues have not stopped Kerry and other China friends from promoting unlimited tariff-free panel imports.
“It’s time to fire John Kerry,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, explained.
For example, Rubio and other Republicans last year accused Kerry of single-handedly stalling the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, a bill designed to ban products made with forced labor in Xinjiang, according to the Washington Post.
That bill was eventually passed, but it only applies to companies proven to use forced labor to make solar panels
In meetings on Capitol Hill, Kerry’s deputy, Jonathan Pershing, told lawmakers that the U.S. government will need more time, five to ten years, to move the global supply chain for solar panels away from China.
With no tariffs, that timeline is now infinity.
You can fool nearly all the people... 