Senators Send Dueling Letters on Solar Safeguard's Future
Six Democratic and two Republican senators are asking President Joe Biden to overrule the International Trade Commission and allow the safeguard tariffs on solar panels and cells to lapse in February, as they were originally scheduled to do. Three Republican and two Democratic senators are asking the president to retain the tariffs for another four years, and to restore tariffs on bifacial solar panels, which were collected for about a year, until the Court of International Trade said applying tariffs to bifacial solar panels after they were originally excluded was unlawful. That decision, from November (see 2111160032), is being appealed.
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Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., led the anti-tariff letter. She said she and her colleagues are asking for all the tariffs to lapse, but added, "At a minimum, we ask that you retain the Section 201 tariff exclusion for bifacial solar panels and not apply the tariffs to imported solar cells." There is no solar cell production in the U.S., though panels are made from imported cells or modules.
The anti-tariff senators continued by saying that "current domestic production only meets 15% of the U.S. solar demand. We will need to utilize global supply chains, free of forced labor, to meet our clean energy and job creation goals while we expand our domestic solar production capacity. In the meantime, continued tariffs will hurt the nearly 90% of workers in the domestic solar industry who work in non-manufacturing jobs, from installation and maintenance to operations, distribution, and development."
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, led the pro-tariff letter, sent on Jan. 20, one day after Rosen's letter. "We are pleased to see that the safeguard is working; however, the goal of the safeguard is to provide the time and space for our domestic solar industry to get back on its feet, and achieving this goal will require additional time. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued exclusion for bifacial solar panels, the domestic industry and its workers continue to reel from import pressure. As you consider whether to extend the solar safeguard, we urge you to extend the duties imposed on imported solar panels for four years, noting that the ITC makes clear: 'an extension of less than four years would not appear sufficient for the industry’s efforts to adjust to import competition,'" they said. Including bifacial solar panels is vital, they said.
They said they disagreed with the premise that the transition to renewable energy will necessarily rely on imported panels, and said that solar installations have grown even with the tariff rate quotas. The solar industry says it would have grown faster without them. "Further, continued dependence on China in this regard rewards and encourages the continuation of the forced labor atrocities committed against the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region," Portman and his colleagues wrote.