For years, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has served as a de facto mouthpiece for Chinese solar manufacturers, consistently pushing policies that benefit China’s dominance in the solar industry at the expense of American manufacturers.
Tariffs must be part of the toolkit to manage the influx of products from Chinese tech companies, whether from e-commerce platforms like Temu or from a growing number of low-cost microchip manufacturers set to flood the global market with semiconductors.
In a recent speech at the New York Economic Club, and again during Tuesday’s debate against Kamala Harris, Donald Trump revived one of his signature policy proposals: tariffs as a powerful tool to revive American industry, protect jobs, and generate revenue for the federal government.
“The Biden administration’s refusal to enforce the 2019 steel agreement agreed to, and then breached by, Mexico has led directly to this devastating plant closure,” said CPA CEO Michael Stumo.
Trump said he wanted the U.S. “to be the manufacturing superpower in the world. We can do that intelligently with trade policy that uses tariffs that encourages production here. We deserve it.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was asked to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on Southeast Asian solar companies in a letter from the United Steelworkers Union (USW) on Aug. 27.
Deployments of solar power facilities in the U.S. by utilities, commercial customers,
and residential customers have risen substantially in recent years due to
technological progress, lower costs, and various tax incentives and credits from the
U.S. government.
If anyone needed yet another example of the importance of China miners and processing companies, Beijing said it would put restrictions on exports of antimony and processing equipment used in batteries and as an alloy to increase a metal’s strength.
Hofusan is one of the most well known investments of Chinese capital looking not only to sell to Mexican consumers, but – more obviously – to export everything from furniture to washing machines duty free to the United States.
As the demand for solar energy deployment in the United States continues to grow, foreign firms are reaping nearly all the benefits. Solar imports in 2024 are outpacing total demand and crowding out domestic solar manufacturers.
