On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that China wants to have “global domination” in the clean energy sector, but the U.S. intends to “play a role to produce items that are critical for the clean energy economy,” but China is hurting the U.S. and its allies by flooding the market.
Yellen said, “I’m here in Georgia today to visit a company called Suniva, which manufactures solar cells. And this is, of course, a key input into solar panels. We have been very heavily dependent — overdependent on China for our supplies of these goods. And the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act have incentivized Suniva to reopen their solar cell plant and to manufacture cells in the United States.”
Host Andrea Mitchell then asked, “[Y]ou’re about to leave for China. … And I understand you are going to be warning China about the flood — Chinese goods are so heavily government-subsidized, their electric vehicles, their lithium batteries, solar panels. So, you’re going to be taking that on. At the same time, they have filed at the World Trade Organization against us for some of the things that we’ve done in the very acts that you’re just talking about. So, are we about to get into a trade war with China?”
Yellen answered, “Well, we need to make clear what our concerns are, and I believe we have very legitimate concerns. There is no country in the world that subsidizes its preferred or priority industries as heavily as China does. And clean energy, whether it’s electric cars, battery, solar producers, the producers in China have received massive subsidies. And I believe China’s desire is to really have global domination of these industries. The firm that I’ll be visiting today was a successful producer of solar cells in the United States some years ago. And, about seven years ago, because China flooded the market with solar panels, drove down the prices to levels at which virtually no American company could compete, this company went bankrupt. And we don’t intend to let that happen again. We intend to have — play a role to produce items that are critical for the clean energy economy, the…Inflation Reduction Act is designed to do that. And we’re seeing a wave of investment creating good jobs across the country. I intend to talk to the Chinese, when I visit, about overcapacity in some of these industries and make sure that they understand the undesirable impact that this is having, flooding the market with cheap goods, on the United States, but also on many of our closest allies.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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