Solar Manufacturing Lured to U.S. by Tax Credits in Climate Bill

Six years ago, an executive from Suniva, a bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, warned a packed hearing room in Washington that competition from companies in China and Southeast Asia was causing a “blood bath” in his industry. More than 30 U.S.-based solar companies had been forced to shut down in the previous five years alone, he said, and others would soon follow unless the government supported them. Suniva’s pleas helped spur the Trump administration to impose tariffs in 2018 on foreign-made solar panels, but that did not reverse the flow of…

The Sunday Read: ‘The Silicon Blockade’

Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security issued a document that, underneath its 139 pages of dense bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail, amounted to a declaration of economic war on China. The magnitude of the act was made all the more remarkable by the relative obscurity of its source. In recent years, semiconductor chips have become central to the bureau’s work. Despite the immense intricacy of their design, semiconductors are, in a sense, quite simple: tiny…