Posted on 04/21/2017 8:56:30 AM PDT by rktman
Solar company Suniva Inc. filed for bankruptcy Wednesday after receiving millions in government subsidies to manufacture solar panels.
Suniva blamed its bankruptcy on competition from cheap Chinese-made solar panels, but the company received about $20 million in support from federal and state taxpayers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“For many years, Chinese manufacturers of solar cells have benefited from favorable, state-sponsored financing and lower labor costs, allowing them to flood the United States market for solar cells and modules with cheap imports,” David Baker, the company’s restructuring officer, said in a statement. “This has negatively impacted manufacturers based in the United States, such as Suniva.”
Suniva, founded in 2006, used federal and state subsidies to produce solar panels in the U.S., but the company struggled to compete with a flood of imported panels from China. Baker said Suniva’s lost $56.3 million since the end of 2014.
But Suniva got help from taxpayers. The company received $8.8 million from the federal government between 2010 and 2016 on top of up to $11 million in state incentives so they could manufacture more solar cells, the Journal-Constitution reported.
The company also received a $5.7 million federal tax credit in 2010 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Suniva is considering filing a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission to protest Chinese subsidies for solar panel producers, and for Chinese attempts to circumvent U.S. tariffs by shifting production to factories in other countries.
China offers solar companies subsidies, in addition to a low-wage workforce. The country spent more than $80 billion on green energy in 2014 alone, while the US spent $34 billion, according to the International Energy Agency.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Solar is the future. It is very unusual for a solar company, especially one that ha received subsidies, to go bankrupt.
HAHA! Just kidding. :)
I’d go bankrupt for much less, but the government never offered me any money.
It is a failure only if you believe the purpose was to provide solar energy.
Nice work if you can get it!......................
Regardless of whether you believe in the technology it not is not the point that should be taken from this article. It wouldn’t matter if it were poppycock widgets as the product. The point is China fully subsidizes certain industries to undercut their US competitors and uses child labor in order to mass produce and we allow their products in. This is a businessman sounding the alarm yet we wish to trash the solar technology industry because it is in line with the green pinko weenies?
wish they’d give me $25 million- I could lose it just as quickly as they do!
Good point. I wonder what PACs this ‘company’ donated to.
I think you mis-understood CIB’s post.
This isn’t necessarily about mis-management or foreign competition.
The goal of this company may have had nothing to do with actually providing a product, and a lot more to do with lining people’s pockets...and kicking some cash back to complicit politicians. And likely that aspect of this endeavor would be considered a success.
Solar is a gov’t racket and I can’t tell you how many companies are going cheap Chinese Solar lately. If you’re going to invest in Solar, at least do it right and know that the payback is at least 8 years out on quality panels that will last 20+ years.
If you choose cheap MiaSolé, then expect to replace them in about 3 years.
Same thing happening in Texas. Unloading of Chinese made solar panels is being pushed by Energy companies and the State. No doubt they were produced with subsidies(Taxpayer money, no doubt).
Well, on our trip back to Reno from SOCAL on US-395 our “view shed” was disturbed/disrupted several times due to huge solar arrays and vast wind farms in the Palmdale area.
“Well, on our trip back to Reno from SOCAL on US-395 our “view shed” was disturbed/disrupted several times due to huge solar arrays and vast wind farms in the Palmdale area.”
Those things have sprung up like weeds all over so cal, the land is covered in black from mexicali all the way to death valley. I can only imagine the real damage to thousands of square miles. Those arrays go far into the distance where you cant see. Better to destroy the entire mojave and the sonoran deserts than have the erfs temperature rise a few thousandths of a degree.
Sounds a lot like the $28 million Rhode Island taxpayers lost thanks to Curt Schilling’s video game company going belly up.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnddddddd there go the warranties!
On the plus side, think of all the See-Uh-O-2 not being released. Never a severe hail storm around when you need one. No doubt the rec’d “special” exemptions for desert tortoise habitat destruction. “Oh, we rounded them up and moved them.” Right.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Noting that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the corrupt feds the specific power to tax and spend for INTRAstate solar power purposes, patriots are reminded that the Founding States gave the “power of the purse” (1.7.1) uniquely to the House of Representatives.
So not only did the House, with help from the likewise corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Senate, unconstitutionally appropriate taxes for the solar project, but the House & Senate evidently did not do their homework with respect to protecting return on investment of stolen citizen dollars for this project.
In other words, noting that states can arguably blow state revenues on anything that they want to depending on threshold of pain of taxpayers, I wouldn’t be surprised if Suniva worked in cahoots with corrupt Congress, the plan possibly being to eventually file for bankruptcy after securing unconstitutional, unaccountable taxpayer dollars from the feds.
Corrections, insights welcome.
Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!
Remember in November ’18 !
Since Trump entered the ’16 presidential race too late for patriots to make sure that there were state sovereignty-respecting candidates on the primary ballots, patriots need make sure that such candidates are on the ’18 primary ballots so that they can be elected to support Trump in draining the unconstitutionally big federal government swamp.
Such a Congress will also be able to finish draining the swamp with respect to getting the remaining state sovereignty-ignoring, activist Supreme Court justices off of the bench.
In fact, if Justice Gorsuch turns out to be a liberal Trojan Horse then we will need 67 patriot senators to remove a House-impeached Gorsuch from office.
Noting that the primaries start in Iowa and New Hampshire in February ‘18, patriots need to challenge candidates for federal office in the following way.
While I Googled the primary information above concerning Iowa and New Hampshire, FReeper iowamark brought to my attention that the February primaries for these states apply only to presidential election years. And after doing some more scratching, since primary dates for most states for 2018 elections probably haven’t been uploaded at this time (March 14, 2017), FReepers will need to find out primary dates from sources and / or websites in their own states.
Patriots need to qualify candidates by asking them why the Founding States made the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I; to limit (cripple) the federal government’s powers.
Patriots also need to find candidates that are knowledgeable of the Supreme Court's clarifications of the federal government’s limited powers listed below.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphasis added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
$25 Million? Chump change...
Solyndra was able to screw the taxpayers for half a billion $$...
Where are those financial records the FBI grabbed?
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