You should beware U.S. companies making announcements about decisions and using government policy as a cover these days, but this seems to make economic sense:

American solar company SunPower will lay off about 3 percent of its workforce in March, a decision that comes after President Trump began imposing new tariffs on imported solar materials earlier this month

SunPower has already started the process of laying off between 150 and 250 workers, largely from its research and development and marketing positions, CEO Tom Werner told The Hill. The cuts will amount to about a 10 decrease in operational expenses.

The cuts made by the publicly traded company, which is based in San Jose, Calif., are largely an effort to stop the bleeding from the new costs associated with the 30 percent tariffs, Werner said.

via thehill.com

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  1. Ironman Avatar

    Food for thought, with a direct tie-in to a target for Trump’s tariffs: Lessons From The Aluminum Industry: The Hidden Cost Of China’s Cheap Solar, with a bit of background here for how that situation developed (from 2012): China now has almost one million tons of unnecessary aluminum and cannot stop producing it.
    Where the environment is concerned, smelting aluminum from bauxite ores has a large carbon footprint because it requires lots of electricity, which in China, is primarily produced through burning coal, where China has become the world’s single largest national emitter of CO2.
    Flash forward to December 2017, where we find that China is struggling to deal with the negative environmental impacts from its approach to expanding its aluminum-production industry: China blasts two provinces for deception in environment fight.
    Here’s the question I have: Would Trump’s tariffs on Chinese aluminum be justified on environmental grounds, since they would contribute to “fixing” the negative externality of excess CO2 emissions associated with subsidized aluminum production, where they might be considered to be the equivalent of Pigouvian taxes?
    Poorly-directed Pigouvian taxes mind you, but still. How would one discriminate between an environmental-policy based tariff and a protectionist one?

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