Well, that’s pretty cool.
“Everyone is talking about” is a phrase President Trump likes to use a lot. Today, everyone is talking about the steel and aluminum tariffs going into effect at midnight Friday morning (here's what we think of this news).
Everyone is not talking about the results of President Trump’s tariffs on solar panel imports. But Bloomberg is! Hooray for Bloomberg. Solar manufacturers are spinning up operations in the United States:
Hanwha Q Cells Korea on Wednesday said it will build a factory in Georgia. JinkoSolar Holding Co. of China is planning one in Florida. And U.S. companies SunPower Corp. and First Solar Inc. say they’ll boost production in Oregon and Ohio.
The expansion underscores how immediate the reaction has been to the tariffs Trump imposed on imported panels in January to spur domestic manufacturing.
One analyst interviewed by Bloomberg took a very dim view of the job-creating potential of little upswing for domestic manufacturing, but another made a pretty straightforward point:
“Absent the Trump tariffs, this wouldn’t be happening,” Jeff Osborne, an analyst at Cowen & Co., said in an interview.
Anyway! AAM was for these tariffs (that are lower than those placed on panels by the Obama administration a while back) when they were announced, and we’re glad to hear they’re working out.