[XorNot]

That's because there's nothing to buy. China dumped a ton of money into the sector and took full advantage of their tightly integrated manufacturing capacity to bootstrap it.

The US looked at that and said "let's tax raw material imports" and half the population is too stupid to realize that they're the ones paying those taxes.

EDIT: it should be noted this is hardly a criticism of China's strategy here- they wanted an industry they saw potential in, subsidized it and bought IP which other countries offered up, and reaped the rewards. They just literally played capitalism better.