Only when they own the means of production.

If they can't extract profit from Chinese imports, they don't want anyone else to import them.

Yes but we don't have a free market.

States don't serve the majority, per se, but whoever wields the state. Cheap imports are good for consumers, but producers struggle. Capitalists wield the state in America, so this is a bad thing.

except the U.S. needs solar panels for military industrial complex reasons too, and they don't want to rely on a notoriously hostile power to build the groundwork of that structure. a big part of selling the U.S. on solar is the promise of energy independence, you don't get independence if your entire foundation is built on another country's tech.

Solar panels degrade over time, I don't know what the numbers are but they used to be dysmal, like 30% reduction in generation capacity over 5 years. Whatever the actual numbers are, we will constantly be replacing panels. I am sure we can figure out refurbishing too at some point.

Agree, but we aren't in a free market. That is a fantasy the conservatives have been pushing forever to get away from regulation.

But then you have the issue of being dependent on China for the solar panels, which is why it is crucial to have domestic production. And we have already seen this demonstrated, as China has banned the export of solar panels recently in reaction to us banning electric cars from import (they would probably hurt our domestic car market).

They do, but I was responding to someone that said Yellen went to China to address it, so they aren't immediately starting with subsidizing production.