Key Points
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen plans to cite the example of steel over-capacity on a trip to China as justification for what looks like a pending crackdown on imports of Chinese clean-tech products..
In the past, in industries like steel and aluminium, Chinese government support led to substantial overinvestment and excess capacity," she said in a speech..
This theory led to anti-dumping tariffs on some steel products as high as 256.44% under President Barack Obama in 2015, before President Donald Trump followed up three years later with 25% tariffs on all Chinese steel products..
Chinese mills did increase capacity in the second half of the 2000s, more than doubling potential output to 1.06 billion tonnes from 489 million tonnes between 2006 and 2010, before rising to a peak 1.22 billion tonnes in 2014..
Unlike steel, electric vehicles, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries really are easily traded on a global scale, and the scale and technological accomplishments of Chinese companies make them formidable competitors..
