As a candidate, Donald Trump talked incessantly about international trade and how he was going to make America great again by renegotiating trade agreements, forcing foreigners to stop taking away our jobs. But during his first year in office, he did almost nothing on that front – possibly because corporate America managed to inform him that it has invested a lot of money based on the assumption that we would continue to honor NAFTA and other trade agreements, and would lose bigly if he broke them.
Last week, however, Trump finally did impose tariffs on washing machines and solar panels. The former tariff was, I think, more about looking tough than about any kind of strategic objective. The latter, however, fits in with an important part of this administration’s general vision. For this is very much an administration of dirty old men.
The solar panel tariff is disturbing because it will surely destroy many more jobs than it will create.
The fact is that the U.S. is largely out of the solar panel-producing business, and whatever the reasons for that absence, this policy won’t change it. The solar panel tariff was imposed using what’s known in trade policy circles as the “escape clause” – rules that allow temporary protection of industries suffering sudden disruption. The operative word here is “temporary”; since we’re not talking about sustained protection, this tariff won’t induce any long-term investments and therefore won’t bring the U.S. solar panel industry back.
What it will do, however, is put a crimp in one of the U.S. economy’s big success stories, the rapid growth of renewable energy. And here’s the thing: Everything we know about the Trump administration suggests that hurting renewables is actually a good thing from its point of view. As I said, this is an administration of dirty old men.