Fellow Story
Sims Gallagher op-ed calls administration's preliminary tariff on Chinese solar panels "short sighted"
The Obama Administration’s preliminary decision to impose a 31 per cent tariff on solar panels imported from China is short sighted. The move could cause a trade war, hurt the US economy, jeopardize US security interests, and put the world further off course in terms of meeting its global climate change goals.
The decision opens the US up to a trade war in renewable energy, of all things. The US currently has a trade surplus with China in solar energy because of large US exports of poly-silicon to China. Not surprisingly, Li Junfeng, a senior Chinese government official, has already proposed imposing retaliatory tariffs on US polysilicon—and a trade war might not stop there.