beijing has a consistent policy of subsidizing and dumping to gain dominance of key industries. metals, energy, etc. they are surely aware of the security implications of this. it seems to be their response to the mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons: since those are no longer usable, create a new asymmetric situation where china can install herself as international dictator without or in addition to military force.
We can't afford not to respond. If we are unwilling to go to war, we'd have to concede to being china's bitch, which is a worse option than war.
Importing solar panels with no means to repair, replace, and resupply would absolutely make things worse; it'd increase dependence on a technology over which we lack control.
This isn't "imperialist" rhetoric, I'm quite plainly speaking in terms of maintaining our own autonomy and independence, not in terms of coercing others.
I don't think you can credit technology from foreign grad students at American universities or companies to those foreign countries. Doubly so since said chinese grad students have a long track record of facilitating the IP theft we're discussing.
Withdrawing would not free other countries to do so; the core difference here is china is a bad actor who exploits and steals IP. not to mention we could get away with this because we have a military of a certain size; smaller countries probably could not.
Regardless of whether we produce domestically, there's no particular reason why we can't work with other cheap nations within our sphere of influence (probably latam) to handle production.
