The biggest beneficiary of Biden’s move is none of those countries. It’s China. The biggest victim is America.
Domestic installers of solar panels had maintained that the Commerce Department’s investigation stopped them from proceeding with projects because of the possibility that Auxin would win, which would result, retroactively, in the imposition of stiff tariffs. “Across the country, solar projects are being postponed or cancelled,” Biden stated in his emergency order.
The White House maintains that it created a “24-month bridge” when domestic manufacturers can “scale up.”
It’s way past time to send the president to business school: his plan is unlikely to succeed.
“The Biden policy gives Chinese entities two years to cement relationships with current customers and establish new ties,” Washington-based trade expert Alan Tonelson pointed out to Gatestone.
Moreover, the Biden approach requires spending far beyond what the administration now contemplates.
Biden’s plan, says Tonelson, “looks like a jerry-built gimmick for placating his green and labor voting blocs rather than a serious strategy to strengthen U.S.-based solar manufacturing.”
Now, thanks to Biden, products built by forced or slave labor will find their way into the United States tariff-free. Chinese producers have been shipping China-made products into Southeast Asian countries—most notably Vietnam—and exporting them to the United States with labels falsely showing manufacture in those other countries.
“Vietnam cannot possibly make all the products that are stamped ‘Made in Vietnam,’” onshoring advocate Jonathan Bass told Gatestone. “It doesn’t have the workers, it doesn’t have the factory capacity, and its exports to the United States have grown far too fast in recent years.”
In 2021, Vietnam’s exports to the United States increased a phenomenal 28.1 percent. In the first four months of 2022, they jumped 29.8 percent.
Biden’s June 6 tariff wavier, unfortunately, has two implications that go beyond clean-energy products. The first relates to the resolution of U.S. trade disputes. The White House maintains that the president’s actions reinforce “the integrity of our trade laws and processes.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) agrees.
Biden, unfortunately, has taken away the seats of these domestic stakeholders.
The second implication is even more important. Biden with his tariff waiver dog-whistled to U.S. manufacturers to keep factories in China.
Bass, also CEO of Los Angeles-based PTM Images, explained that U.S. companies at the beginning of June were contemplating making investments to move supply chains from China.
“Within hours of Biden’s solar panel decision, they decided there was too much uncertainty about U.S. government policy to risk leaving Chinese soil,” he noted. “Biden made it clear he sided with the Chinese and will not encourage supply chains in other industries to get out of China.”
Biden always says he wants to support U.S. manufacturers, but he keeps making decisions favoring Chinese workers. He did that on June 6 when, with a single stroke of his pen, he devastated a U.S. industry, undermined the American legal system, and promoted slave labor in China.