Joe Barnes
in Washington
02 October 2024 4:39am
JD Vance accused the Democrats of spending billions of taxpayer dollars on Chinese solar panels during the vice-presidential television debate.
The Republican said that if Kamala Harris “really believed climate change is serious” she would have pushed for more green energy to be produced in the United States.
“When we talk about clean energy… I think that’s a slogan that often the Democrats will use here,” Mr Vance said during the clash on CBS with Democrat candidate Tim Walz.
“The real issue is that if you’re spending hundreds of millions or even billions of American taxpayer money on solar panels that are made in China, you’re, number one, going to be making the economy dirtier.
“We should be making more of those solar panels here in the United States of America.”
Mr Vance was making reference to China’s grip on the production of solar panels, including on US soil, despite Joe Biden’s $370 billion in funding to combat climate change — the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — some of which goes towards green energy.
A recent report by the Institute for Energy Research revealed that by next year, Beijing would own enough solar panel plants in the US to control half of the country’s production capacity.
It said Chinese-backed firms were taking advantage of Beijing’s heavily subsidised supply chains for raw polysilicon — a key component — as well as unfinished solar modules to gain an advantage in the US market.
China controls 97 per cent of the world’s polysilicon, the key building block for solar panels.
The Communist state controls 80 per cent of all manufacturing stages of solar panels.
Chinese-backed firms are also able to claim subsidies from Mr Biden’s IRA with Ms Harris having made the casting vote to drive the policy through.
These businesses mostly assemble the finished product in the US, importing the solar cells needed from Asia.
Washington has blamed Beijing’s dominance on “unfair trade practices”, and Mr Biden announced tariffs on Chinese solar cells in May because they “threaten to significantly harm American workers, businesses and communities”.
The US president was reimposing tariffs that were first implemented by Donald Trump in 2017.
In recent years, Mr Biden had been attempting to bolster American production of solar panels through tax breaks.
Domestic businesses have announced 30 manufacturing investments in the past year.
But they are still being undercut by Chinese exports that are much cheaper than products produced in the US.
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