President Joe Biden is doubling down on his suspension of United States tariffs on suspected China-made solar panels, vowing to veto a bipartisan plan that would reverse his tariff waivers.
In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to avoid U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.
The suspension of tariffs came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar, and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam for the sole purpose of avoiding the tariffs.
This month, House Republicans, as well as Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) on the House Ways and Means Committee, voted to pass a resolution that would reverse Biden’s tariffs waivers. The resolution is expected to go to the House floor in the coming weeks.
Biden’s White House, in a statement, told Reuters that it “strongly opposes” the plan, claiming it would “sabotage U.S. energy security.”
“It’s not about slowing things down,” Ali Zaidi, Biden’s climate adviser, told Reuters. “It’s about fundamentally undermining our progress towards increased energy security and having the tools we need to attack the climate crisis.”
Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) blasted Biden’s statement, telling Reuters that “China has been found to have violated our trade laws, yet the United States has failed to respond, including suspending tariffs and letting their unlawful behavior go unanswered.”
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.
While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across America’s working- and middle-class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show.
A study from economists at the Coalition for a Prosperous America finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about ten million American jobs while boosting domestic output.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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