Who's the fool and who's the genius.

Just one week after the Trump administration announced a massive 30% tariff on imported solar panels, one of China’s largest solar panel manufacturers announced plans to open a manufacturing plant in the United States.

The company, JinkoSolar, said on Monday that they have received the green light from their board of directors to “finalize planning for the construction of an advanced solar manufacturing facility in the U.S.

It's amazing that that move worked so quickly.  Someone must know what they are doing.

In stark contrast, there's the Solyndra debacle.  There, another president wasted millions and millions of tax dollars trying to prop up a solar panel company.  In opposition to all common sense, the politicians set up Solyndra in one of the highest cost regions they could find, built a very expensive factory with all the bells and whistles, and then went bankrupt.

Having started a business or two myself, I recall how stunned I was driving past the huge Solyndra facility in the Bay Area.  It was all first class, as if they were GM or some other well established company with a long history of successful competition in a competitive industry.  In fact, they were a start up, sheltered from the rigors of free competition by friendly politicians using public money - a recipe for disaster.

They should have opened that factory in a second hand warehouse in the Midwest, with railroad access, where the labor and rent would be inexpensive.  But no, they had millions of tax dollars and a tone deaf politician behind them, so why not splurge?

Their collapse was inevitable, I guess, with so much isolation from real free market competition.

So, to compare and contrast, in one administration, huge piles of taxpayer money were wasted propping up a business that failed, for political reasons.  In another administration, tough action is taken against a foreign competitor abusing our markets, who then sets up a domestic factory right here in the USA, at zero cost to the taxpayers.  

I'll take door two, Bob, any day of the week.