It turns out a Texas windmill farm developer's request last month for nearly half a billion dollars in stimulus funds to create 2,000 jobs in China doesn't rank first on the audacity scale.
Shockingly for American taxpayers, and sadly for the staggering 10.2 percent of Americans who are unemployed, it doesn't even rank second.
That's because Washington already has doled out hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to foreign renewable energy firms. Of the $1.05 billion in clean energy grants awarded by D.C., $849 million -- 84 percent -- went to foreign wind companies, according to an analysis by Russ Choma of the Investigative Reporting Workshop. He wrote:
"The cash grants were given for the installation of 1,763 megawatts of capacity - 1,566 installed by foreign companies. Using the Renewable Energy Policy Project's own numbers, as many as 4,500 manufacturing jobs may have been created overseas."
A strong, broad Buy American clause in the stimulus bill could have prevented the off-shoring of U.S. tax dollars intended to create jobs for unemployed Americans. My union, the United Steelworkers, and the AFL-CIO pushed hard for that language, and polls showed 86 percent of Americans supported it. Republicans and lobbyists for multi-national corporations that wanted to spend U.S. tax money overseas opposed Buy American provisions.
Congress adopted weak, limited Buy American language. Now D.C. exports stimulus dollars to create jobs in foreign countries.
Some of the foreign wind firms that got stimulus funds have American subsidiaries. But most of them shipped major components for wind farms to the U.S. That means American stimulus dollars employed foreign workers. One Spanish company, Iberdrola S.A., got $545 million from U.S. taxpayers.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat from New York, denounced the request to use U.S. tax dollars to create jobs in China and demanded the Obama administration deny funding. But it's too late for the $849 million in stimulus dollars already given away to foreign wind companies. American tax dollars, meant to create jobs and nurture a green energy industry in the U.S., are gone with the wind.
Lavishing stimulus funds on foreign businesses is tragic for another reason: Those overseas companies are competitors to fledgling U.S. firms that were supposed to get the money. President Obama has said he wants the U.S. to be "the world's leading exporter of renewable energy." That's not going to happen if the U.S. pays European and Chinese manufacturers to import wind turbines.
Congress set aside at least $3 billion in the stimulus bill for renewable energy projects. That investment would have two benefits. Growth in renewable energy - from sources such as windmills and solar cells - could reduce dangerous pollution from burning fossil fuels. In addition, the Blue Green Alliance estimated in its report, "Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line," that U.S. manufacturers could create 850,000 jobs if Congress adopted a national standard requiring 25 percent of electricity to be generated with renewable sources by 2025.
The key, obviously, is that the wind turbines and solar cells constructed to meet that standard couldn't be imported for the jobs to be created in the U.S. The U.S. industry, however, needs the kind of help foreign governments give their clean energy manufacturers. The Blue Green Alliance report notes:
"Without new policies promoting domestic manufacturing, an unnecessarily large portion of these jobs will remain overseas."
Keith Bradsher of the New York Times in a July 13 story described China's policy to protect and promote its renewable energy industries: "China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world." That includes, Bradsher recounted, a competition last spring where China disqualified all foreign bidders on technicalities for 25 contracts to supply wind turbines. Beijing then awarded the contracts to seven Chinese companies, including some that had never built a turbine.
There's no reason except a desire to shoot itself in the foot for the U.S. not to protect and promote its own renewable energy industries. "The Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line" report provides recommendations for Congress to cultivate American renewable energy industries, including long-term investment tax credits, adopting a national standard requiring a minimum percentage of electricity be generated through renewable energy, passing cap and trade legislation, and providing low-interest financing.
After the Texas windmill incident, I wrote Sen. Schumer asking for bold action to support U.S. clean energy manufacturing. In the letter copied to all members of Congress, I told him we must expand and accelerate the availability of incentives for manufacturing wind turbines and other clean energy technologies - here, in the U.S. One important way to do that is for Congress to extend to the manufacture of components like turbines the funding incentives that are now provided for production of clean energy.
Clearly, another method would be to Buy American. When constructing a wind farm in Texas, why would taxpayers give their money to support importing the turbines from China or Spain when there are perfectly good turbine manufacturers here in the U.S.?
The Texas windmill farm developer announced this week that its Chinese partner plans to construct a $50 million turbine factory in the U.S., according to a story in the New York Times. But that facility won't supply the turbines for the project that the partnership wants $436 million in stimulus funds to support. Those would come from China. So, in the end, it still means nearly half a billion in U.S. tax dollars would create 2,000 turbine-building jobs in China.
When China passed its $600 billion economic stimulus bill this summer, it adopted "Buy China" provisions. Obviously, as far as wind turbines were concerned, it was implementing a "Buy China" policy before that.
Is the U.S. going to continue thwarting itself and tilting at windmills or is it going to adopt and enforce a robust Buy American policy and build some?
If a nation has no imort duties and lets its currency float then we should have free trade with them.
Fair Trade ---NOT one sided free trade. Our corporations, politicians and the Internationalist Chamber of Commerce is unilateraly committing national economic suicide!
You are right, If China is doing the buy China thing, we certainly should be doing to our local manufactures.
Rooftop 3 cent pv solar and waste biochar can provide all the energy we need, clean, safe, cheaper and forever.
Cap and trad is a bankster, coal and nuke giveaway, not a climate bill.
See my profile for proof and links.
Look we are becoming because of endless wars (drug and overseas)
Bad trade deals and too many illegals. We can afford alternative energy.
The new propane.
From an Economics point of view, state mandates, and the federal Cap and Trade bill, will more than double the cost of electricity. What we need to decide is whether our economy can stand the high increase in the cost of energy.
Unless we are successful is getting China, India, Russia and others to make the same enforceable commitment, all we are going to accomplish is economic suicide.
China, India, Russia and others are not dumb enough to sign on to saving us from Global Warming. However, China is smart enough to recognize that they can reap huge economic rewards by using our government funded research to manufacture and sell us the hardware our government is mandating for renewable energy. The recent fiasco with the 80 million dollars of tax money that governor Deval Patrick wasted on Evergreen Solar is all the proof we need.
Unless we reverse course, we will end up as China’s slaves.
and wasn't it a Democrat Congress that passed this Tarp?
so 'quickly' i might add?
Don't get me wrong, Republicans are to blame too
but the MOST BLAME needs to be put on the Lobbyists
Separate Business and STATE!
and RESEPARATE CHURCH and STATE
Separate Business and State? Are you out of your mind? That kind of deregulation brought us the Great Depression and this Great Recession -- with the word "great" used unfortunately.
BUSH passed a bill worth 350 billion!
Did you forget in Feb. Obama making that 'inspired' speech claiming that if"WE" didn't pass this TARP we would face dire economic consequences!!??
WOW!
you need to do some studying before you keep passing around such false information
Sheesh!
and Corporations from Donating to individual campaigns!
MY GOODNESS!!
your 'allegiances' are easier to see everyday
Enough of that crap is floating around over the internet.
you mean YOUR people
don't put me in YOUR group!
my goodness, the you two 'attacked' you think you worked for Democrats
or the Chinese!
The most egregious lie concerns the Smoot-Hawley (tariff) Act signed by President Hoover. The claim made by laissez-faire economists is that this Act contributed to the Great Depression. This claim is easily dismissed because the Act was singed 17 June 1930 after the stock crash of October 1929.
Prior to 1930 there was nothing to speak of in the way of protectionist measures (designed of course to promote and keep jobs in the U.S.). So protectionism (tariffs) was not the cause of the crash. Far from it, according to historical economist Paul Bairoch.
Our unemployment numbers will get worse before they get better said, Bernecke and Obama. Well, WTF, of course, if you give China our taxpayer stimulus money then shove it in our face by bringing Chinese turbines and solar panels to set up here. That's our money and it should be totally our American companies and products with our people making all of them.
This is unacceptable and there is no way we should have to put up with this. Maybe we should be demonistrating where they put up this chinese crap to face us everyday, only as reminder that our stimulus money was handed over to chinese companies.
This is precisely the reason our economy is in the tank and precisely the reason we need to gut the corruption from Washington & start over. If Wall Street's "health" were so instrumental, would we be in this shape? Drastic times call for drastic measures. We need to implement at least some form of protectionism now. Call it a moratorium if it makes anyone feel better, but stop the bleeding and get our jobs back starting TODAY!
This has got to stop.