'Reckless': Trump Deals Blow to Renewable Transition With Solar Panel Tariff

Dealing a serious blow to the U.S. solar industry and despite protests from experts and a national trade group, President Donald Trump has approved a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panel materials.

“With Americans in Puerto Rico and Houston still struggling to recover from climate disasters, Trump should be supporting renewable energy rather than making it more costly.”
—Howard Crystal, CBDResponding to recommendations from the U.S. International Trade Commission, which was lobbied by two foreign-owned U.S.-based companies that argued they couldn’t compete with cheap materials from Asia, Trump on Monday authorized (pdf) a 30 percent tariff on solar cells and modules that will drop by 5 percent annually over the next four years.

U.S. solar companies, environmentalists, and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) decried the “reckless decision” that they warned, in the government’s effort to “keep foreign-owned Suniva and SolarWorld afloat,” will not only further endanger the planet but also “create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving, which will ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs.”