Years after CPA sounded the alarm, FEOC rules are forcing Chinese divestitures — but Section 232 polysilicon tariffs are needed to finish the job.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) today welcomed a wave of Chinese clean-energy divestitures sweeping the U.S. solar industry — a direct result of the Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions CPA long championed and that became law in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. As reported by The Economist, Chinese firms are now selling off their American solar factories at fire-sale prices, transferring the plants, technology, and operational know-how into American hands.
Since 2025, nearly $9 billion in Chinese renewable-energy investment in America has been cancelled, paused, or sold to local investors — up from essentially zero in 2022 and 2023 — with some assets changing hands at discounts of as much as 40 percent. Chinese manufacturer Boway offloaded its newly built three-gigawatt solar-module factory in North Carolina for $254 million, roughly 15 percent below what it cost to build. Corning acquired a two-gigawatt module factory in Arizona, and Jinko Solar sold a 75 percent stake in its two-gigawatt Jacksonville, Florida facility to an American investor. The trigger, as CPA predicted, was the FEOC provision barring firms tied to China from accessing federal clean-energy tax credits such as Section 45X.
CPA sounded the alarm on this years ago. As far back as 2023, CPA’s economists warned that Chinese manufacturers stood to collect up to $125 billion in U.S. renewable-energy tax credits, and in 2024 a CPA-backed report exposed how Chinese solar firms were exploiting IRA tax credits to entrench their dominance on American soil. CPA went on to champion the FEOC Excise Tax and stringent FEOC prohibitions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, and fought efforts to weaken them.
“Years ago, CPA warned that China was using American clean-energy tax credits to capture our solar industry — and we led the fight to slam that door shut,” said Jon Toomey, President of CPA. “Today, that door is closing. Chinese firms are divesting their U.S. factories at fire-sale prices, and American investors are acquiring the plants, the technology, and the know-how. This is exactly what FEOC was built to do.”
But CPA cautioned that a retreat is not yet a victory. China still produces roughly 95 percent of the world’s polysilicon — the foundational input for solar panels — and several of the announced deals amount to superficial restructurings aimed at compliance rather than genuine reshoring. Notably, even the American firms now acquiring these plants say they will need higher tariffs on Chinese polysilicon to compete globally.
“We cannot mistake a retreat for a finished job,” Toomey added. “China still makes 95 percent of the world’s polysilicon, and some of these deals are paper compliance, not real reshoring. The administration must finish what FEOC started with strong, global Section 232 tariffs across the entire solar supply chain — from polysilicon to finished modules — so this capacity is rebuilt in America and stays in America.”
CPA has submitted comments urging the Department of Commerce to adopt comprehensive Section 232 tariffs spanning the full solar supply chain, and its landmark solar report called for global tariffs with no exemptions, rigorously enforced and set to achieve defined domestic-production targets. CPA urged the administration to close off circumvention through superficial joint ventures and third-country transshipment — ensuring that the capacity now returning to American ownership translates into durable, genuinely domestic manufacturing.
# # #
