Senate Votes to Undo Freeze on Chinese Solar Tariffs, Setting Up Showdown With Biden

U.S. Capitol building on May 1, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The Senate narrowly advanced a joint resolution reversing the Biden administration’s emergency shield against tariffs for some Chinese-made solar panels.

Now, the ball is in President Joe Biden’s court. The White House has said that he'll veto the joint resolution, warning that the measure would “create deep uncertainty for jobs and investments in the solar supply chain and the solar installation market.”

If he issues that veto, it would be the third of his presidency—and the pro-tariff legislation would need two-thirds of the vote in both chambers to overcome it.

The final vote in the Senate was 51 “yeas” and 41 “nays.”

“We’re going to get American jobs back,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who first introduced the Senate version of the resolution earlier this year, said in an interview with NTD’s Melina Wisecup prior to the vote.

The vote comes days after the House voted in favor of its version of the resolution. In it, 221 members of Congress supported the legislation, while 202 opposed it.

Twelve Democrats broke ranks to join their Republican colleagues in backing the measure, which could end a 24-month tariff freeze for some solar panels with parts from China that undergo final assembly in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia.

A masked worker sorts silicon wafers at the manufacturing center of solar cell maker Trina Solar in Changzhou, China, in November 2009. Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images

That tariff freeze, which the Department of Commerce put into effect in September 2022, came amid the department’s investigation into tariff evasion by Chinese companies, which have been subject to anti-dumping duties since 2012.

The department announced its preliminary finding in December 2022, concluding that four companies with production in China “are attempting to bypass U.S. duties by doing minor processing in one of the Southeast Asian countries before shipping to the United States.”

The House resolution was co-sponsored by Reps. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Christopher Deluzio (D-Pa.), signaling the bipartisan buy-in on protectionist policy intended to boost U.S. manufacturing and reduce support for a top strategic adversary.

In a May 3 interview with NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister publication, Nick Iacovella of the Coalition for a Prosperous America said China has “a chokehold on the industry,” aided in part by its use of forced labor by Uyghurs and other minorities.

“This isn’t just a vote to hold the Chinese accountable for illegally violating our trade laws. It’s in support of actually preventing dumped, forced labor product from coming into the United States,” he told Steve Lance.

“We have an economic responsibility, and we have a human rights responsibility,” Sen. Jim Lankford (R-Okla.) said in an interview with NTD’s Wisecup prior to the vote.

Tariffs Divide Democrats

In the hours before the May 3 evening vote, some Democrats in the Senate publicized their concerns with the legislation.

Led by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), a group of nine lawmakers penned a letter via Medium explaining why they don’t back the reimposition of solar panel tariffs.

One signatory, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), has long faced criticism from Republicans and conservatives because of her ties to China.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speaks during a hearing in Washington on March 3, 2021. Greg Nash/Pool/Getty Images

“Our current domestic solar manufacturing can only meet about 15 percent of demand. As we work to bolster our manufacturing capabilities here at home, we must temporarily rely on these imported panels to satisfy our domestic demand and support American solar jobs,” the letter reads.

It claims that the resolution “will kill jobs, raise energy costs, weaken our nation’s energy security, and make us less competitive with China.”

“Whether there’s a two-year [tariff] extension or not, the chip manufacturing and battery manufacturing is flocking to the United States,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told NTD’s Wisecup in comments before the May 3 vote.

Other Senate Democrats, including Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), made their support for the resumption of tariffs clear in the days before the May 3 Senate vote.

“The United States relies on foreign nations, like China, for far too many of our energy needs, and failing to enforce our existing trade laws undermines the goals of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act to onshore our energy supply chains, including solar,” Manchin said on April 26.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) arrives for a Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Ukraine at the U.S. Capitol on March 2, 2023. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

Brown said in an April 26 statement, “The president got this one wrong. I’ve always stood up to presidents of both parties to fight for fair trade and a level playing field for Ohio workers, which is why I will support Congressional action to end the administration’s waiver of solar tariffs.”

While Brown and Manchin are relatively conservative Democrats up for reelection in less liberal states next year, another tariff supporter—Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—has no such pressures and tends to align with the left wing of his party on many issues.

Last year, Wyden reacted to Biden’s emergency tariff suspension by saying he had “significant concerns about gifting Chinese producers—wherever they’re located—a two-year delay in penalties, instead of holding them accountable for their trade cheating.”

Iacovella stated, “Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said, ‘This is wrong from the administration, we should not be protecting illegal Chinese trade activity.’”