Good Green Jobs in a Global Economy: Making and Keeping New Industries in the United States

8. After 2010: Continued Unevenness in the Green Transition

8 By 2011 there was an intense battle of frames for defining the relationship between the global economic crisis that had begun in 2008 and the green energy transition. Whereas Democrats continued to view green jobs as a partial solution to problems of unemployment and energy costs, many Republicans had come to view green industrial policy as another example of government overspending. Renewable electricity standards, system benefits charges, and cap-and-trade programs were especially vulnerable, because opponents could depict them as taxes that businesses and households could ill afford. Green transition policies were merged with “Obamacare” to become part of a socialistic tax-and-spend conspiracy that could not be justified in an economic climate of a fragile recovery amid growing federal debt. The very financial crisis that had undermined the credibility of deregulation and other policies associated with neoliberalism was turned against green developmentalism. The 2011 bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar energy company that had received $500 million in federal loans, also weakened the momentum for green industrial policy. Republicans in the House held hearings on the bankruptcy of the company and used the occasion to argue against the horse-betting of green industrial policy. One Republican congressman, Fred Upton of Michigan, commented: “In this time of record debt, I question whether the government is qualified to act as a venture capitalist , picking winners and losers in speculative ventures and shelling out billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them afloat.” (Wald and Savage 2011) Republicans also suggested that the administration’s loan guarantees for Solyndra were linked to political campaign support, but administration officials denied any wrongdoing. A few weeks later, House Republicans approved a stopgap extension of the federal budget that provided emergency funding for flood victims but cut $1.5 billion in loan guarantees for electric vehicle manufacturing. Democrats opposed the measure, After 2010: Continued Unevenness in the Green Transition 192 Chapter 8 claiming that up to 50,000 jobs could be lost, and the government narrowly averted a shutdown.1 The solar industry pointed out that Solyndra was only one of several American solar companies that had shut down or reduced production during the preceding eighteen-month period, and it pointed the finger back at the US government’s failure to establish a strong demand policy and subsidies proportional to those of China and other countries. The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, a group of American crystalline silicon manufacturers led by SolarWorld USA (a subsidiary of a German company), also claimed that the US government had failed to protect domestic manufacturing from predatory Chinese subsidies, which it claimed were illegal under international trade law. The coalition also asked the US government to investigate trade violations, but the request was so sensitive that the other manufacturing companies in the coalition didn’t disclose their names because of fear of retaliation from China. The petition initiated a process of inquiry by the United States International Trade Commission, which determines injury, and the US Department of Commerce, which determines if imports are unfairly priced and Chinese manufacturing is at facilities with unfair subsidies. The companies also initiated similar inquiries in Europe.2 The call for protection of American photovoltaic manufacturing was perhaps the most visible example of the trade defensiveness side of developmentalism in 2011. Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries USA, commented: China’s systematic campaign to dismantle the US industry has cost thousands of jobs in Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania . China’s wrongful tactics run systematically across the board; central planning has subsidized most facets of these companies’ business. China actually has no production cost advantage. Labor makes up a modest share of solar industry costs, China’s labor is less productive, its raw material and equipment have come from the West, and China must pay for long-distance shipping. Yet, massive state subsidies and sponsorship have enabled Chinese manufacturers to illegally dump their products into a wide-open US market. (Cichoski 2011) The solar industry’s claims provoked a reply from China and a counter -reply from the solar industry. China promised an investigation into American subsidies of its solar, hydropower, and wind exports, and the Chinese firm SunTech turned free-trade rhetoric back on the United States: Protectionism would not only put thousands of jobs at risk, but it would inhibit solar technology’s ability to compete against traditional forms of electricity gen- After 2010 193 eration. A...