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The Senate voted on Wednesday to restore tariffs on solar panels from a Southeast Asian Chinese company found to be coming to the United States in violation of trade rules.
The measure, passed by a vote of 56 to 41, has been approved by the House of Representatives. It made a show with the Biden administration, which has temporarily suspended tariffs to try to ensure the country has an adequate supply of solar panels to combat climate change.
President Biden has said he will vote for the measure, and a two-thirds majority of lawmakers in both houses is needed to pass it.
But the measure, which some key Democrats supported, is a significant rebuke of the Biden administration’s actions. Critics say Mr. Biden’s decision not to impose tariffs on Chinese solar producers violates U.S. trade rules and fails to protect American workers.
“This vote is a simple choice: Do you stand with American manufacturers and American workers, or do you stand with China?” Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said in a statement. “Now we’re sending a clear message that we need to level the playing field for workers and manufacturers in Ohio and across the country.”
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, responded to the vote on Twitter. “If President Biden cared about American jobs, the environment, preventing slave labor, or fighting Communist China,” Mr. Rubio wrote, “he would sign this legislation.”
The battle centers on whether certain solar imports are brought into the United States at unfair prices. In December, a US trade court ruled that four Chinese companies had tried to evade US tariffs on solar products shipped from China by routing their products through factories in Southeast Asia.
Typically, companies found to be circumventing US tariffs will immediately be hit with higher duties to bring their products into the United States. But Mr. Biden took the unusual step in June to pause those rates for two years.
The delay was supported by solar panel importers and project installers, who said the tariffs should be put on hold for longer.
In a statement, Abigail Ross Hopper, chief executive of the Solar Energy Industry Association, said lawmakers had “chosen to pull the rug out from businesses that invest billions of dollars and employ thousands of people in their country.”
“Curbing supply at this critical time will harm American business and prevent us from deploying clean, reliable energy in the near future,” she said.
But some prominent Democrats say the president’s decision is a violation of U.S. trade rules written to protect American manufacturers from unfair foreign competition. Republicans also seized on the issue to criticize Mr. Biden as weak in China and highlighted China’s solar industry’s ties to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region.
“We must hold accountable those who violate US trade laws, including China,” said Representative Dan Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, who authored the House legislation. “If we fail to enforce our trade laws, it will hurt Michigan and American businesses and workers.”
The Biden administration has taken steps to limit US dependence on China, including investing heavily in building American manufacturers of solar panels, semiconductors and car batteries.
But the White House sees mitigating climate change as one of its top priorities, and officials have stressed that in the near term the United States must continue to buy solar products from China, which makes the majority of cells and panels that convert sunlight into sunlight. electric.
In a statement on April 24, the White House said it strongly opposes the congressional resolution and that the president will veto it if it passes.
“The administration is working aggressively to support domestic solar panel manufacturing,” the White House statement said, adding, “However, these investments will take time to increase production – which is why last spring, the president declared an emergency to ensure that Americans have access to electricity reliable, affordable and clean.”
For Republicans and Democrats in Congress, tough measures against China have been one of the rare areas of bipartisan agreement, with lawmakers joining forces to call for tougher trade penalties and fire the chief executive of TikTok, the Chinese-owned app.
On Monday, Senate Democrats announced they would introduce a bill to maintain America’s economic leadership against China, building on legislation before subsidizing the semiconductor industry. The House select committee on China is also preparing to begin investigating major business ties to forced labor in Xinjiang. Adidas, Nike, Shein and Temu are expected to be early targets of the panel, according to people familiar with the plans.
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