President Joe Biden netted billions in his landmark climate-spending law to revive solar manufacturing in the United States — prompting the Korean panel giant Qcells last year to invest $2.5 billion into building the country’s largest photovoltaic factory in Georgia.plans to fulfill a U.S. solar manufacturers’ request to bring the full force of American trade restrictions down on imported Chinese panels.
U.S. government scientists invented solar panels more than half a century ago, and the country monopolized manufacturing for decades. But production shifted to Europe and Asia in the 1980s. By the early 2010s, China vaulted forward to become the dominant supplier. Backed by low-interest state-backed loans, Chinese manufacturers drove down the price of panels below the point at which any U.S. company could make money.
As Democrats debated the climate law that ultimately became Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Jon Ossoff fought to include legislation to give new tax credits to solar manufacturers like those in his state. Yet analyststhat the extra support could make U.S. panels competitive against those produced overseas and warned that the type of restrictions needed to preserve a domestic market for American suppliers would slow deployment of solar.
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