Solar Panels: Biden's 'Buy China' Plan
by Gordon G. Chang • June 14, 2022 at 5:00 am
Beijing set out to destroy the American solar panel industry with subsidies that allowed Chinese companies to sell below the cost of manufacture — and, with the help of a series of neglectful American presidents, it largely succeeded.
Americans workers cannot compete with slaves. Chinese solar panels are often made with what is politely termed "forced labor," Uighurs and other captive Turkic minorities transported around China to factories resembling concentration camps.
Now, thanks to Biden, products built by forced or slave labor will find their way into the United States tariff-free. Chinese producers have been shipping China-made products into Southeast Asian countries — most notably Vietnam — and exporting them to the U.S. with labels falsely showing manufacture in those other countries.
Biden "has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law." — Mamun Rashid, Auxin Solar's CEO, NBC News, June 6, 2022.
"We have not invested in building up American capacity the way we should, and we have not addressed China's repeated cheating," [Senator Sherrod] Brown [D-Ohio] stated. "On all these decisions, American solar manufacturers and their workers must be at the table." Biden, unfortunately, has taken away the seats of these domestic stakeholders.
The second implication is even more important. Biden with his tariff waiver, dog-whistled to American manufacturers to keep factories in China.
Biden always says he wants to support American manufacturers, but he keeps making decisions favoring Chinese workers. He did that June 6 when, with a single stroke of his pen, he devastated a U.S. industry, undermined the American legal system, and promoted slave labor in China.
On June 6, President Joe Biden, declaring a national emergency, granted a 24-month tariff exemption for solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The biggest beneficiary of Biden's move is none of those countries. It is China. The biggest victim is America.
Biden's executive order essentially suspends a Commerce Department investigation, initiated by a California maker of solar panels, into blatant Chinese tariff evasion. Biden's declaration of emergency does not formally end the investigation, but no tariffs during the 24-month period can be collected, even if Auxin Solar, the complainant, ultimately prevails.
