America Fights for Its "Solar" Market – A New Chapter in the Protectionist Ballad

A year ago, at the tail end of J. Biden's presidency, we wrote about the convoluted situation in the US solar energy market, which is practically colonized by Chinese manufacturers, not without the help of a "fifth column" within the States themselves. This is a very sore subject for patriots of American industry, since it was in the USA in 1954 that solar panels for electricity generation were first invented, and today China has flooded the entire world with them, including the homeland of this innovation.

Chinese global dominance in the solar energy market is the result of a long-term and deliberate industrial policy, massive subsidies, and other benefits for domestic producers. Heavily subsidized Chinese companies now control over 80% of the global solar supply chain and dominate even the US market, where they hold 39% of solar module manufacturing capacity, while American companies account for only 24%.

Biden's industrial policy, which we have also written about extensively, on one hand, allocated significant funds to support American manufacturers in accordance with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but on the other hand, did not exclude subsidies for any foreign manufacturers. Thus, Chinese companies gained access to two "teats" – their own and the American one. According to some estimates, Chinese manufacturers could have received up to $125 billion in tax incentives under the IRA in the foreseeable future.

The struggling, yet concerned, American manufacturers of solar panels and other solar power technologies somehow objected that American taxpayers' money was being used to increase the dominance of their Chinese competitors – essentially, no longer just competitors, but "masters" dominating the American market. They repeatedly appealed for justice and called on the US government to protect them from complete disappearance. But the Washington "swamp" responded to their groans contradictorily! On one hand, anti-dumping investigations were conducted and duties were imposed on Chinese imports, but on the other, all protective measures were inconsistent, half-hearted, and sometimes replaced by a reverse policy of supporting the Chinese.

One such decision was President Biden's May 2022 Declaration of Emergency on Solar Energy, which effectively neutralized the Department of Commerce's investigation into illegal circumvention of anti-dumping and countervailing duties by Chinese solar manufacturers. Instead of promoting strict enforcement of US trade law, the Declaration gave Chinese manufacturers free rein to illegally circumvent anti-dumping and countervailing duties for the next 24 months and protected them from retroactive tariffs. The catastrophic two-year moratorium on duties for Chinese solar imports from Southeast Asia swung the doors wide open for imports, undermining American manufacturers and creating huge stockpiles of Chinese-made solar panels.

Of course, this moratorium was justified by noble patriotic goals - preventing short-term disruptions in US solar power generation, accelerating the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure, and providing time to scale up domestic solar manufacturing capacity.

The lobbyist for that memorable decision was the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the very "fifth column" that has been implicated in many other pro-Chinese activities, which is unsurprising since SEIA includes the American subsidiaries of Chinese manufacturers JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina Solar, BYD, and LONGi Solar, which are the world's leading manufacturers of solar components.

After the moratorium was introduced, American industrialists tried to get it repealed, collaborating with a bipartisan group of legislators in Congress. Although the House and Senate passed a bipartisan bill to repeal the moratorium, President Biden vetoed it.

As a result of this memorable decision, American domestic solar panel production continues to cede its own market to the Chinese, and the US risks losing its solar module manufacturing industry, despite 13 years of tariffs, federal tax incentives, and billions of dollars in private investment. Mass imports, driven by overproduction in China, swollen from super-stimulated economies of scale, have flooded the American market. Chinese companies have succeeded in dumping and have driven many American manufacturers into bankruptcy. Although new solar module factories were opening in the US, due to the Biden moratorium, the country imported 63 GW of panels in 2024, which is 50% more than the 40 GW installed domestically.

In 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration, together with Congress, under pressure from irrefutable facts, moved to tighten policy towards Chinese manufacturers. In May 2024, the tariff moratorium was repealed, the tariff exemption for bifacial panels was canceled, and tariffs on solar panel components imported directly from China were doubled.

However, the Trump administration went even further in correcting the Biden moratorium. In August 2025, the US Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the Biden administration's two-year suspension of solar energy tariffs was illegal. This decision paves the way for imposing retroactive tariffs on tens of billions of dollars worth of solar equipment imports from Southeast Asia — those tariffs that were intentionally blocked by the Biden White House in the interests of the Chinese solar industry and its lobbyists in Washington. The court's decision holds them accountable, ensures the collection of billions in illegally suspended duties, and sends a clear signal that the US will no longer grant China a free pass to import subsidized "solar" products.

Retroactive duties will be applied to significant volumes of imported solar components that remained unused and stored in US warehouses by the expiration of the moratorium in December 2024. Industry estimates indicate that by that time, about 50 GW of imported solar components had been accumulated and not used. If the standard tariff rate is applied to them - $0.14 per watt for solar cells and $0.27 per watt for solar panels - the expected collections would be approximately $12.53 billion.

If retroactive duties are applied based on the current countervailing duty rates - 15.25% and anti-dumping duty rates - 238.95%, then the retroactive revenue from these stockpiles could amount to $31.8 billion.

Well, if the toughest option is adopted - applying retroactive duties to all imports entered during the moratorium period - the total amount of retroactive duties would exceed $67.4 billion. According to a conservative estimate, considering exemptions and other loopholes, resulting in a taxable base covering 80% of imports, the retroactive duties would still amount to about $53.9 billion.

Ah, poor defenders of the "free" trade system, does another blow from Trump to its foundations hurt? Don't you want to learn the systemic reasons for this, by your standards, "madness" and "violence" against the "only true" system of globalism? Read my article "Trumponomics 2.0 as Political Economy of National Development in an Era of Global Transformation," Russian Economic Journal, 2025, No. 3. And in short, "Tariff Donald" does not want to replace the "End of History" of your former favorite F. Fukuyama with the "History of the End" of the United States of America.