Despite the overcast weather, the opening ceremony for Jinko Solar’s new factory in Jacksonville, Florida, was a decidedly upbeat affair. Under a large, white tent, amid a cluster of warehouses belonging to corporate titans like FedEx and Bridgestone, the event’s speakers sounded victorious and full of promise.
To Lenny Curry, the mayor of Jacksonville, the long and squat rectangular factory represented “the opportunity for Jacksonville to become a major player in solar technology.” Florida Secretary of Commerce Jamal Sowell noted that while “Florida has long been a destination for vacations,” it was now “also the premier destination for innovators like Jinko Solar.”
The attendees had reason to feel triumphant. It was February 2019, and the Jacksonville factory suggested that a decade of U.S. solar trade policy was finally paying off. After benefitting from generous state subsidies and anti-competitive dumping practices in the early 2010s, Chinese solar pane
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
