First Green Energy War

The European Commission has confirmed its intention to impose duties on imports of Chinese solar panels from Thursday (6 June), triggering an immediate response from China, which announced the launch of an anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe into European wine. --EurActiv, 5 June 2013

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The European Commission has announced it is imposing temporary anti-dumping levies on Chinese solar panel imports. It comes despite opposition from Germany and other European Union members, and amid fears it could spark a trade war. Announcing the decision, EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht said it was an "emergency measure to give life-saving oxygen to a business sector is Europe that is suffering badly". "Our response is balanced, legal and justified", he added. –-BBC News, 4 June 2013 China still has plenty more cards to play in an increasingly ugly trade dispute with the European Union, the official People's Daily newspaper said on Thursday, accusing Europe of not realising that its global power was waning. The EU will impose duties on imports of Chinese solar panels from this week, a move that infuriated Beijing despite European attempts to soften the blow with a reduced rate. China in response announced on Wednesday its own anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probe into imports of wine from the EU. "We have set the table for talks, (yet) there are still plenty of cards we can play," the newspaper wrote. "China does not want a trade war, but trade protectionism cannot but bring about a counter-attack." A declining Europe needs to understand it can no longer laud it over other countries, the paper added. --Reuters, 6 June 2013

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France has demanded that the European Union holds an emergency summit after Beijing responded to a Brussels announcement of “anti-dumping” tariffs on Chinese solar panels by threatening retaliatory levies on wine imported from Europe. One day after the European Commission levied heavy tariffs, reaching 48pc in August, on subsidised solar panels made in China, the Far Eastern country announced it is considering a tit-for-tat move to levy a similar “anti-dumping” duty on wines made in EU. Francois Hollande, the French President, has expressed alarm at a development that threatens exports worth €546m (£464m) for France and called for a special Brussels summit to discuss the escalating trade war between the EU and China. --Bruno Waterfield, The Daily Telegraph, 6 June 2013 Brussels and Beijing are embroiled in a full-on trade war, and China is ready to hit the European Union where it hurts: its wineries. China is accusing French winemakers of dumping their wares in the Chinese market at prices below what it would take to make a profit. In reality, this move has little to do with the price of a bottle and everything to do with solar panels. Beijing’s itchy trigger finger shows that China doesn’t take the EU seriously as an economic powerhouse and believes it can throw its weight around; Beijing managed to sway 18 of 27 member states, including solar-hungry Germany, into voting against the Chinese solar panel tariff last week. This began as a story about a misguided green attempt to to prop up a stumbling industry, but it’s quickly becoming another tale illustrating Europe’s global impotence. --Walter Russell Mead, Via Meadia, 5 June 2013 Former UK chancellor warns Europe, US against setting up trade barriers to developing nations. Nigel Lawson believes it is wrong for the West to use environmental concerns as a weapon to beat China. “It is wrong in two ways. It is wrong morally because it is asking them to slow their development down. It is also wrong in practical terms because it is quite clear they are not going to do it (reduce carbon emissions sufficiently). China is not abandoning coal. It is going ahead with its coal-fired power stations.” --China Daily, 10 August 2012 Lawson, a former leading financial journalist and editor of The Spectator magazine in the 1960s, is regarded as being one of the UK’s most influential chancellors of the post-war period. He argues if Europe or the United States respond to the current economic crisis by putting up protectionist barriers against China and other developing nations it could lead to a 1930s-scale depression. “I think it is important to maintain globalization and an open world trading system. We don’t want to see a wave of restrictions. I am hopeful there won’t be because everyone is aware of how disastrous the 1930s were,” he says. --China Daily, 10 August 2012

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