Biden Admin’s Solar Funding Fuels China Human Rights Abuses: GOP Letter

Large solar panels are seen in a solar power plant in Hami, northwest China's Xinjiang region, on May 8, 2013. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Top Republican lawmakers are warning the Biden administration that funding for green technologies in the Inflation Reduction Act will likely worsen human rights abuses in communist China.

GOP lawmakers warned in a letter (pdf) that parts of the administration’s Inflation Reduction Act aimed at increasing dependence on green energy sources would drastically increase the import of solar panels from China and make it difficult for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).

The UFLPA mandates that all products made in China’s Xinjiang region are to be considered made with forced labor unless certified otherwise by the CBP commissioner.

“We are concerned in particular that the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) may discourage CBP from fully enforcing the UFLPA with regard to imported solar panels,” the letter said.

“Under the IRA, U.S. taxpayers will likely pay tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, grants, and tax credits for solar panels. Absent vigorous oversight however, this funding is likely to go directly toward subsidizing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) forced labor apparatus that produces a vast majority of solar panels in the PRC [People’s Republic of China].”

Metals for Green Energy Tied to Genocide

The letter, signed by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.), said that much of the world’s supply of materials required for solar panel production is based in China and, specifically, in Xinjiang.

The United States maintains that the CCP is engaged in genocide and other abuses against the Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

A facility believed to be a "reeducation camp" where predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, in Artux, north of Kashgar in China's western Xinjiang region, on June 2, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

The CCP, which rules China as a single-party state, dominates global solar production and controls much of the raw materials required for their production. Xinjiang is a major supplier of polysilicon, for example, which is a metal used in most solar panels.

As such, the GOP letter argues, the Biden administration’s top-down effort to promote solar energy would likely fuel both the CCP and its use of forced labor and genocide in the region.

“We are deeply concerned that the American taxpayer will be subsidizing the CCP’s solar industry and therefore subsidizing forced labor and human rights abuses,” the letter said.

“The IRA showers hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, grants, and tax credits on renewable energy and electricity production. A large portion of this taxpayer-funded splurge will likely go toward the manufacture or production of electricity from solar panels—many of which will involve inputs produced by forced labor.”

The letter further warns that there is a lack of meaningful oversight concerning the influx of technologies from Xinjiang, and that the Biden administration’s decision to waive tariffs on solar panels made with forced labor in Southeast Asia could be seen as tacit acceptance of human rights abuses in the name of renewables.

“We have several concerns with CBP enforcement of the UFLPA as it pertains to solar panels,” the letter said. “For one, CBP’s short list of companies whose products will be banned from the U.S. risks setting a precedent that signals that companies not on this list are free to import products tainted with slave labor into the U.S.

“Furthermore, the Biden Administration has sent signals that seem to encourage importing solar panel products in violation of the UFLPA. President Biden’s decision to stop investigating solar panels imported from Southeast Asian countries using components from the PRC sends a further wrong signal that this administration is unconcerned with America’s reliance on forced labor.”