Biden Threatens To Veto Bill To Restore Tariffs On Countries Allegedly Helping Chinese Solar

The Daily Caller

Biden Threatens To Veto Bill To Restore Tariffs On Countries Allegedly Helping Chinese Solar

John Hugh DeMastri on April 24, 2023

President Joe Biden threatened to veto a bipartisan bill Monday that would restore tariffs on four Southeast Asian nations that Chinese firms have allegedly been using to avoid U.S. duties.

The proposed legislation had advanced through the House Ways and Means Committee with bipartisan backing last week, and would repeal the administration’s moratorium on solar tariffs from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The White House claimed that maintaining the moratorium is necessary to satisfy U.S. demand for solar panels while the U.S. ramps up its own solar panel production with support from the president’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to a statement.

A Commerce Department investigation in December found that some Chinese firms — many of which have connections to forced labor of Uyghur Muslims, an ethnic minority group in China — had been assembling products in the four nations above to circumvent longstanding import duties on Chinese goods, Bloomberg reported.


“Passage of this joint resolution would undermine these efforts and create deep uncertainty for jobs and investments in the solar supply chain and the solar installation market,” the White House said. “If Congress were to pass this joint resolution, the President would veto it.”


Several Democratic members of Congress, including Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, have in the past criticized the moratorium, with Brown and Casey in March calling for the Biden administration to end it, The Hill reported. The resolution has already passed the Senate, and would require only a simple majority to pass the House and override the president’s rule under the Congressional Review Act.

Solar panel installations fell significantly in 2022 — with utility-scale solar installations falling by nearly one-third — thanks in part to significant supply chain disruptions caused by the mass detention of Chinese solar panels by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Some 2,600 solar panel imports worth roughly $806 million were stopped by CBP between October 2022 and January 2023 due to alleged violations of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

Several trade groups representing companies and workers who install solar panels issued a statement opposing the legislation last week, dubbing the moratorium a “necessary bridge” to protect jobs as the U.S. builds up its own base of solar panel manufacturing. The growth of America’s clean energy and green manufacturing sectors, a core Biden administration goal, is facing headwinds from limited real estate and access to the nation’s electric grid, as companies race to secure funding and support from the IRA.

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