Essay by Eric Worrall

“… this joint resolution would undermine .. jobs and investments in the solar supply chain and the solar installation market.”. But what about China’s alleged use of solar supply chain slave labour?

Biden threatens to veto House resolution to end solar panel tariffs freeze

BY ZACK BUDRYK – 04/24/23 12:24 PM ET

President Biden on Monday vowed to veto a congressional resolution that would undo his freeze on solar panel component tariffs should it reach his desk.

In a statement Monday, the White House called the moratorium essential to allowing the U.S. to transition to renewable energy while it builds its domestic manufacturing capacity.

“This rule is necessary to satisfy the demand for reliable and clean energy while ensuring Commerce is able to rigorously enforce U.S. trade laws, hold trading partners accountable, and defend U.S. industries and workers from unfair trade actions,” the White House said in a statement. “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.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s (R-La.) office has said the measure, which invokes the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to end the freeze, will be brought to the House floor in the week ahead.

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Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3966409-biden-threatens-to-veto-house-resolution-to-end-solar-panel-tariffs-freeze/

In my opinion tainted Chinese solar products shouldn’t be hit with tariffs, they should be banned.

Almost the entire global solar panel industry is implicated in slave labour, according to Anti-Slavery International and Sheffield Hallam University;

Report exposes solar panel industry Uyghur forced labour links

Our responsible business manager Chloe Cranston explains why, for the solar panel industry, Uyghur forced labour is a serious problem

Today, researchers at Sheffield Hallam University have published a report which concludes that almost the entire global solar panel industry is implicated in the forced labour of Uyghurs and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples. The solar industry and governments must act now to make sure the global transition to clean energy has human rights, decent work and sustainability at its core, and is not done off the back of crimes against humanity committed against Uyghurs.

As now is well known, the Chinese government is perpetrating mass human rights abuses against Uyghur and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Uyghur Region), known to its local people as East Turkistan, including forced labour. Legal and human rights experts have defined the abuses as crimes against humanity and genocide.

Sheffield Hallam’s research provides clear evidence on the use of forced labour in the production of raw materials and other inputs for solar panels in the Uyghur Region, and how this is used in the global solar energy industry’s supply chain. Of particular concern for the solar panel industry, Uyghur workers are involved in the first stages of production, including to crush quartz rocks and working in the coal-fuelled furnaces for the production of polysilicon, as well as further along the supply chain.

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Read more: https://www.antislavery.org/solar-panel-industry-uyghur-forced-labour/

Obviously China strenuously denies using slave labour. And before you ask, I don’t know if Hunter Biden is on the boards of any Chinese solar manufacturing companies.

There is also the issue that Biden has repeatedly promised green manufacturing jobs for Americans. I’m not sure how that promise is supposed to be compatible with maintaining a flood of low cost and allegedly slave labor tainted renewable energy product imports from China.

Maybe people waiting for the promised green jobs can follow President Biden’s advice to New Hampshire coal miners, and learn to code.