In lafayette, Tennessee, USA, employees of the solar power company are installing a photovoltaic system. Source: vision china
The United States inherited early tariffs on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia.
On Tuesday, US Eastern Time, Biden, the great leader, opposed a decision of Congress, which tried to impose tariffs on solar panels in four Southeast Asian countries. This means that the United States’ tariff relief for solar panels going from Malaysia to West Asia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia will continue until June 2024. Biden also showed that he did not plan to extend the waiver after this date.
Earlier this month, the US Senate narrowly passed the decision to regulate tariffs, and several important Democrats supported this step. After being opposed by Biden, the decision was basically “born in the back”. In order to read the opposition order to subvert the big leadership, two-thirds of the members of both houses of Congress need to be willing. On this issue, such votes are basically difficult to reach.
The United States’ tariff strategy that haunts the four Southeast Asian countries is actually intended for China. During the Trump administration, the United States imposed tariffs on China’s solar energy industry, and Biden extended this strategy for four years in February last year. However, after an investigation last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce thought that some China solar panel manufacturers were trying to evade U.S. tariffs by realizing their products in Southeast Asian countries. Some congressmen and small solar companies in the United States shouted that they would also impose tariffs on products from four Southeast Asian countries to “punish China”. However, due to various reasons, Biden did not follow this sound. In June last year, he granted tariff relief to solar panels in the above four countries, valid for two years.
In December last year, a commercial court in the United States ruled that four China companies “tried to evade US tariffs on China’s solar products” by transporting products through workshops in Southeast Asia. Since then, some members of Congress have focused their attention on Biden’s earlier pace of stopping tariffs on four Southeast Asian countries, hoping to subvert it.
Biden chose the latter between “punishing China” and ensuring the priority of his great leadership agenda, which was exactly one of his initial intentions to oppose the decision. Promoting the transformation of clean power is one of the purposes of Biden’s leadership life. His goal is to make American electricity break away from its independence on fossil fuels by 2035, which will make solar energy occupy 40% of the national electricity demand, much higher than the current 3%. In view of this purpose, the United States needs to install large-scale solar energy equipment, and at present, the United States is nearly 80% independent of the entrance to Southeast Asian countries.
This move is also intended to save time for the development of American production industry, and American workshops are not ready to take over all the returning production industries at present. Biden said in his opposition statement on Tuesday that the tariff revision is not conducive to the renovation of the United States and will bring serious uncertainty to solar energy companies and workers. He hopes to improve his domestic solar panel manufacturing ability by eight times by the end of his first term. However, this kind of labor can’t be completed overnight, and American workshops need time to develop. It is necessary to purchase solar panels from China in the short term to achieve meteorological purposes.
The strategy of imposing tariffs not only threatens Biden’s great leadership agenda, but also harms the US solar industry. In a statement, the American Solar Property Association (SEIA) said that the legislation to regulate tariffs will increase 30,000 rest booths in the solar energy industry in the United States and weaken the power safety in the United States. Just as high as $1 billion in retroactive tariffs and the threat of higher costs led to the early or ban of hundreds of solar names in the United States last year.
For Biden’s opposition order, the American industry praised it, saying that the entrance of solar panels is very important. At present, solar panels made in foreign countries in the United States only account for less than 30% of the world’s quality, which is the number after the tax relief granted by the Inflation Reduction Act last year.
On May 12, the US authorities also announced the new details of the preferential strategy of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was thought to close a window for American solar producers to inherit imported solar cells. According to the new rules, if American solar energy developers want to get full tax credit, they must open up, give birth to or make a certain proportion of finished products in the United States, but the country of origin ratio of batteries is not clearly defined. Analysts believe that this means that as long as other parts of the product meet the quality cost threshold in the United States, solar cells used to assemble photovoltaic modules can be delivered overseas.