To Protect U.S. Solar Manufacturing, Trade Body Recommends Limits on Imports<br />It called on Mr. Trump to implement more stringent restrictions “necessary to save American manufacturing.”<br />The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group<br />that has fought any tariffs or barriers to imports, said in a statement Tuesday that the commissioners had taken a thoughtful approach and did not recommend “anything close to what the petitioners asked for.” But it emphasized that proposed tariffs would be intensely harmful to the industry.<br />Trade officials recommended on Tuesday that the United States impose restrictions on solar power equipment purchased from abroad,<br />including tariffs of up to 35 percent, setting the stage for one of President Trump’s first major trade decisions.<br />Workers who install solar power projects, utilities who purchase the power<br />and major commercial users of solar power, like retailers, could all be damaged by such restrictions, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the Energy Trade Action Coalition, which represents those groups.<br />But since Mr. Trump came into office, powerful business lobbies have pushed back on<br />that tough approach, arguing that tariffs benefit a narrow slice of industry at the expense of other companies and consumers of those products, who have to pay higher costs.
