What A Week. It is widely expected and planned that Trump will announce a tariff in response to the 201 petition filed by the terrible companies, SolarWorld and Suniva. Led by terrible management, executives are hoping to reframe themselves by blaming others. If you haven’t stopped buying those products, you should ask yourself why. More than anything the damage is done already, the market has been at a standstill for over 6 months while the case went through the process. I personally believe that this was done with intention. Suniva met with trade representatives prior to filing and my conversations with agency personnel also indicated that a move against China was desired by the administration.
What To Expect. SEIA and solar executives met with Wilbur Ross a few weeks back. Now that it seems that Ross is on the outs with Trump with Lighthizer taking command of trade negotiations that meeting could be a negative if Ross went to the Oval with a pro-solar view. As Amy Harder told the crowd at SolarWakeup Live! DC, Lighthizer is much more of a China hawk than most in the group of advisors. Even with the conservative pushback on the solar tariffs you should brace yourself for tariffs and quotas, the question is how much of each. Some have said that tariffs could come in high but not high enough to matter to SolarWorld and lacking the cash for Suniva to be happy. Quotas could be put in place but nobody is excited about the prospects of having totally the total imports from China.
A Global Settlement? I can only hope. This has been 7 years in the making and everybody is losing right now except those opposed to solar. The idea would be to stop the tariffs in the US on foreign modules, stop the tariffs in China on silicon and add some cash import fees on materials that would result in aiding local manufacturing. Downstream solar keeps getting crushed by these bogus trade cases as development entities can’t handle the starts and stops of the market.
SolarWakeup View. First, solar needs to take some lessons from the Patriots. Win at any cost. Stay tuned for more info once the tariff is announced. We will hold a conference call shortly after the announcement with a few experts to give you their take. Make sure you join us in New York to get more info about the tariffs and how it will impact your business going forward. Only about 20 tickets left at this point so get them while they are still available.
Presented By EnterSolar. EnterSolar is a leading provider of solar photovoltaic solutions to the commercial marketplace that is ranked the #1 solar developer in New York State and in the top 10 nationally.We are currently hiring at our growing company.
- Bloomberg: U.S. Solar Has a $1.5 Billion, Long-Shot Plan to End a Trade War
- NPR: U.S. Set To Decide In Trade Dispute Threatening Booming Solar Industry
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- Greentech Media: In Key Solar Markets, Fires and Hurricanes Caused a 5% Decline in Solar Irradiance in Q3 2017
- Vox: This graphic explains why 2 degrees of global warming will be way worse than 1.5
- RTO Insider: FERC Nixes SMECO Request to Pre-empt Md. Solar Rules
- CNBC: This Hearst ranch has raised cattle since 1865, now it also powers Apple’s headquarters
- Energy Storage News: World Bank plans ‘Scaling Solar and Storage’ program
Opinion
Have a great day!
Yann