American workers can out-work and out-compete anyone as long as the competition is fair, but for too long it hasn't been fair. We're not going to let China flood our market.
President Biden and I have seen firsthand the impacts of surges of certain artificially cheap Chinese imports on American communities in the past, and we will not tolerate that again.
Markets need reliable demand signals and fair competition for the best firms and technologies to be able to innovate and invest in clean energy and other sectors. By undercutting global prices for these goods, Chinese policy-driven overcapacity disrupts the necessary demand signal that would enable market-based investment to be viable.
In 2023, the price of a solar panel manufactured in China dropped to 15 cents per watt, more than 60% below the price of a U.S.-made panel. These heavily subsidized and artificially low prices put U.S. solar manufacturers at an extreme disadvantage during a critical turning point in the development of the domestic solar manufacturing industry.
The bottom line is China wants to kill the American solar industry. I'll say that again: China wants to kill the American solar industry.
In order to compete on a global scale and advance U.S. energy independence, we must put American manufacturers first and hold Communist China accountable for its use of forced labor and unfair trade practices – period.
There is wide ranging evidence China is targeting the US solar industry. It is an existential threat to an American growth industry and requires a forceful response … Thousands of workers at Ohio hometown companies work day in and day out to expand our domestic solar manufacturing capability. It is time we stand with those workers and fight off China’s unfair trade practices.
American workers and American businesses should be building our clean energy economy, but Chinese companies are working overtime to cheat the rules, our economy, and our workers out of the job.
As America works to build out manufacturing in key clean energy supply chains to reduce the country’s reliance on China’s supply chains, we need to use every tool at our disposal to boost the U.S. solar manufacturing industry. The administration made the right decision to strengthen protections for solar components we seek to build in the U.S.
Yes, trade in clean energy products by all means, but global dependence on one source whose interests differ from our own is not ideal.
... The U.S. should work to loosen China’s chokehold. The domestic clean energy manufacturing incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are a start. The Biden Administration can also re-impose tariffs on Chinese-made solar components routed through Southeast Asian countries.
American solar manufacturers have been rightly sounding the alarm bell about deteriorating market conditions for months now and the need to take corrective actions.
There is great risk that the largest beneficiary of the IRA’s solar energy tax credits may be China.
