Solar Industry Says Republican Policy Bill Would Cede Production to China

After the first Trump administration imposed tariffs on imported solar panels, companies opened or announced plans for new U.S. solar panel factories, reviving a manufacturing business that had largely withered away.

Those plans accelerated under the Biden administration, which offered generous tax incentives to manufacturers and developers of solar farms.

But now solar manufacturers fear that the Republican policy bill, which is still working its way through Congress after the Senate passed it on Tuesday, would end the nascent revival and hand China virtually complete control of solar panel production.

“This is going to put people out of business,” said Mike Carr, the executive director of Solar Energy Manufacturers for America, which represents more than 15 companies and 6,100 manufacturing workers. “This is going to devastate the industry.”

Modern solar panels were developed at Bell Labs, AT&T’s research arm, in the 1950s. The United States was the leading manufacturer of panels as recently as the 1990s, but lost its lead over time. Production shifted first to Japan, then to Germany and ultimately China, which now makes a large majority of the world’s solar panels and the components and raw materials that go into them.

Various presidents have tried to bring back manufacturing with the help of federal aid and tariffs on imported solar panels. The most recent effort to help the industry was President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Inflation Reduction Act. That law offered hundreds of billions of dollars in tax incentives for individuals and businesses to buy solar panels, along with electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies, to stimulate the domestic manufacturing of those products.