Germany racked up one economic success after another for most of this century. But the loss of Russian natural gas due to the war in Ukraine has dealt a severe blow to its industry through higher energy costs.
Two things. First of all when you just decide to shut down all your nuclear power plants, you need to come up with a plan to replace the low carbon electricity in the grid. Solar installations in Germany dropping by 2/3 is really not a good strategy in that case.
Then it was not just solar panel manufacturers, but also tooling manufacturers, who often were bought out by Chinese companies, with Chinese government money. That is the actually intressting part of the manufacturing chain.
Two things. First of all when you just decide to shut down all your nuclear power plants, you need to come up with a plan to replace the low carbon electricity in the grid. Solar installations in Germany dropping by 2/3 is really not a good strategy in that case.
Then it was not just solar panel manufacturers, but also tooling manufacturers, who often were bought out by Chinese companies, with Chinese government money. That is the actually intressting part of the manufacturing chain.