President Biden’s recent decision to extend most Trump-era tariffs on solar cells and panels has revived bipartisan charges that it is killing American jobs.
The Protecting American Solar Jobs and Lowering Costs Act – the brainchild of Sens. Jacky Rosen, Nevada Democrat, and Jerry Moran, Kansas Republican – seeks to annul the order and establish a program to ramp up U.S. production and manufacturing of solar panels and other solar energy components.
Mr. Biden’s extension of the so-called Section 201 tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed in 2018 was interpreted as a balancing act in which he attempted to protect the U.S. solar industry while reducing some tariffs to help his climate change agenda.
He made the decision just two days before the tariffs were set to expire. He issued a four-year extension earlier this month but decreased the tariffs from 30% to 18% and loosened restrictions, such as excluding tariffs for a solar panel component used in large-scale projects and doubling the number of solar cells that can be imported duty-free.
The extension sought to protect domestic manufacturing amid lobbying from labor unions. The loosening of some restrictions also would boost a key climate agenda item by helping the clean-energy sector expand and access affordable, crucial parts from abroad.
Still, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have made their distaste for the tariffs crystal clear, repeatedly labeling the effort as “job-killing solar tariffs.”
“We should be working to bolster domestic solar manufacturing capabilities in ways that don’t stifle American solar deployment, raise energy prices for consumers or lessen job opportunities for American workers,” Mr. Moran said in a joint statement with Mrs. Rosen.
“The current policy has not worked,” Mrs. Rosen said, “and the United States now has some of the highest prices for solar panels in the world.”
A bipartisan coalition of senators, including Mrs. Rosen, have long advocated for Mr. Biden to end the tariffs. They lobbied Mr. Biden to repeal them before he was even sworn into office. And other efforts to repeal Mr. Trump’s directive were never successful.
While the price to implement solar power in the U.S. has dropped sharply in recent years and decades, it remains higher than in many other developed parts of the world.
A vocal opponent of the tariffs, the Solar Energy Industry Association has estimated that the tariffs have cost the U.S. solar industry nearly 13,000 jobs since they were implemented by Mr. Trump in 2018. They also say that nearly 20,000 projected new solar jobs never came to fruition and that almost 90% of current jobs in the solar industry are non-manufacturing, resulting in a heavy reliance on the supply of panels.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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