A White House effort to help U.S. solar panel-makers hangs in the balance as manufacturing advocates argue jobs are on the line in Georgia, where a pair of Jan. 5 races will decide the balance of power in the U.S. Senate for the next two years.
According to advocates of Trump’s America First manufacturing agenda, the tariffs are crucial to protecting jobs and could weigh on the Jan. 5 runoff elections of Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Georgia Republicans, who have been quiet on the issue.
Solar manufacturing is big business in Georgia, particularly in Dalton, a northwestern city near the Tennessee border, where a $200 million plant, planned in the wake of Trump’s Section 201 tariffs and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, created hundreds of local jobs.
A waiver to Trump’s tariffs on China allows two-sided panels into the U.S. duty-free, undermining the growth of an advanced manufacturing sector that’s ramped up significantly since 2018.
A proclamation issued by Trump ahead of the Nov. 3 election is attempting to claw back the loophole, which hurts U.S. manufacturers, but the measure awaits further action from Trump’s trade czar.
The proclamation faces administrative hurdles and cannot go into effect until after the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs in the state. But solar manufacturing advocates are making the case that Perdue and Loeffler can help themselves by pushing for fast action on the issue.
Some administration officials fear pushing the measure at this point could signal that President Trump is conceding the election, a source familiar with the dynamic told the Washington Examiner.
But this source said that it should not signal defeat because it is the Trump policy anyway. “The reality is, you can still do this because it’s going to be your policy going forward if you were to win.”
White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Director Peter Navarro “is struggling to get that message across to folks at USTR,” this person said. A hand recount of all presidential election ballots cast is underway in Georgia as the Trump team mounts a legal effort to contest the results in key states.
If Republicans forfeit both seats, control of the Senate majority will flip to the Democrats.
Democrats, said one source, are “already making promises about solar manufacturing tax credits and policies that will greatly expand the size of the solar market, so the extension of [Trump’s tariffs] will be important to counter those promises in the Georgia Senate runoffs.”
A recent memo from analysts at ClearView Energy Partners predicted that a President-elect Joe Biden could revoke Trump’s solar product tariffs “because they raise the cost of greening up the grid” and could do so using the same 1974 Trade Act powers that Trump used to impose them. “Election outcomes still matter,” ClearView said.
Billed as the “largest solar factory in the Western Hemisphere,” Dalton, Georgia’s Hanwha Q Cells site, is one of several advanced solar manufacturing facilities in the U.S. that analysts say could be harmed if the tariff loophole remains in place.
Without this, “the proclamation that the president signed is meaningless,” a source familiar with the discussions said.
