Subsidy investigation aims to help protect bloc's industry from flood of cheap imports, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has said
The European Union has launched a subsidy investigation into Chinese wind turbine companies,
in an effort to shield domestic industry from competition posed by cheaper products.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, said on Tuesday the probe would examine whether Chinese firms participating in wind parks across Europe may have benefited from state support from Beijing. The probe will look into conditions for the development of wind parks in Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria.
Vestager's announcement comes just days after the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, opened a separate subsidies probe into two Chinese consortiums bidding for a solar-farm contract in Romania.
"We saw the playbook for how China came to dominate the solar panel industry," Vestager stated during a speech in Princeton, New Jersey, citing "massive subsidies for domestic suppliers."
Comment: The EU is following the lead from the US hegemon and is blaming China and/or Russia for all their problems. The EU forgets that China also can play this game which could have severe consequences for EU businesses in China.
The EU does not look inward to see how they can make it more innovative, competitive and support entrepreneurs. Instead it likes to legislate, control and micromanage its citizens and thus has turned into what someone recently coined as a lenocracy.
Beyond Lenocracy
The word I came up with is "lenocracy." The first part of that word comes from leno, the Latin term for a pimp. Yes, what the word means is a government of pimps.
Let's unpack that phrase a little bit. If, as the saying goes, prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then pimping must be up there in the oldest half dozen or so. What makes a pimp economically interesting is that he adds no value to the exchanges from which he profits. He doesn't produce any goods or services himself. His role is wholly parasitic. He inserts himself into the transaction between the sex worker who provides the service and the customer who wants it, and takes a cut of the price in exchange for allowing the transaction to happen.
This kind of parasitic interaction is far from unusual in economics, but it's not always as common as it is now. There are societies and eras in which most economic activity is mediated by pimps of various kinds, and other societies and other eras in which such arrangements are relatively rare (and often harshly penalized). Right now, in the modern industrial world, we live in an economy where nearly all exchanges are subject not just to the exactions of a single pimp but to whole regiments of pimps, each of whom has to be paid in order for the exchange to take place. Furthermore, this orgy of pimping is sponsored, controlled, and mandated by government at all levels and by the holders of political and economic power more generally. Thus, lenocracy.
Comment: The play-out goes from bad to worse...no matter who, no matter what.