As President Donald Trump moves ahead with his plan to impose global tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, clean energy industry groups are voicing their concerns that the duties will hurt their sector and the rest of the U.S. economy.
Trump announced March 1 that he would sign a proclamation that would enact a 25% duty on all steel imports and a 10% duty on all aluminum imports, stricter than Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's original recommendations from February. The White House said the tariffs are part of a bigger effort to improve national security, but several industries, including most of the energy sector, have argued that the duties will hurt American manufacturing and trade relations with other countries. Axios reported that Trump wants to sign the proclamation as soon as March 8, citing two senior administration officials.
If signed, the steel tariffs will compound the effects from duties on imported solar panel products Trump approved in January, said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, or SEIA. Both tariffs will add costs to large-scale solar projects, Harper said. The uncertainty around solar tariffs has already led to the loss of 9,800 jobs, according to the Solar Foundation.
"We are asking President Trump and Congress to reconsider support for tariffs and adopt pro-American policies that protect American jobs," she said in a March 7 statement. "There has been very little interest in building substantial new solar manufacturing capacity as a result of solar tariffs." SEIA has estimated that solar tariffs could lead to 23,000 jobs lost.
Steel towers
The domestic wind industry is also worried about how the tariffs will affect wind turbine manufacturing. During wind turbine tower maker Broadwind Energy Inc.'s Feb. 27 earnings call, CEO Stephanie Kushner said that if towers were not included as a protected product, prices for towers and wind turbines would go up as U.S. companies would have to compete with cheaper Asian tower imports.
"Steel tariffs will decrease competition and trade, ultimately making capital-intensive energy infrastructure projects more expensive by adding cost for U.S. manufacturers along the supply chain," American Wind Energy Association CEO Tom Kiernan said in a March 2 news release. "If implemented, this trade policy would run counter to the administration's goal of U.S. energy dominance and harm the U.S. manufacturing workers supporting the wind industry's rapid growth."
Not all renewable energy industry groups are panicking over the steel tariffs. Gil Jenkins, American Council on Renewable Energy's vice president of communications, told S&P Global Market Intelligence that he believes that most wind turbines in the U.S. market are made from domestic steel and tariffs would only have a "marginal impact on the wind industry."
Impacts on the domestic solar industry from the steel tariffs will likely be modest, he added.
"It's likely that steel and aluminum tariffs would only result in a modest increase in the cost of solar installations," Jenkins said, citing a Roth Capital Partners note that said duties could lead to a 1 to 3 cent pet watt increase in solar PV systems.
