U.S. Solar Factories Say Biden Isn't Doing Enough To Protect Them From China

President Joe Biden netted billions in his landmark climate-spending law to revive solar manufacturing in the United States — prompting the Korean panel giant Qcells last year to invest $2.5 billion into building the country’s largest photovoltaic factory in Georgia.

As the assembly line revs up this month, so does the federal government’s support.

Last Wednesday, Biden signaled plans to fulfill a U.S. solar manufacturers’ request to bring the full force of American trade restrictions down on imported Chinese panels. Last Friday, the administration announced a $255 million loan to a company promising to open in Tennessee one of the first new factories outside China in years to make polysilicon for solar equipment. On Monday, the White House launched a $7 billion “ solar for all ” program meant to help build 1 million individual systems across the country.

Yet solar manufacturers say it’s not enough to keep American factories open in the face of a massive influx of panels so cheap that some buyers are using the equipment to make garden fences. Blaming illegal subsidies in China for artificially lowering the price of panels, Qcells and at least six other U.S. solar manufacturers filed a petition Wednesday urging the federal government to crack down.

The filing asks the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate whether panel producers in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are violating U.S. trade laws against subsidizing exports and selling solar equipment for below cost.

“China and Chinese-owned companies are manipulating our market,” Tim Brightbill, the trade lawyer representing the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing, said on a call with reporters Tuesday night.