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America's economic future depends on cheap electricity—and that means solar. Solar dominates new installed generation across the globe because it’s the cheapest and fastest way to deliver new electricity. Whether we're powering advanced manufacturing, fueling data centers for the AI race, or meeting basic energy needs, America needs abundant solar power to compete globally.
The problem? China's current grip on the solar market.
That’s why President Trump’s promises to reshore American manufacturing and restore American Energy Dominance have shaken the nerves of subsidized Chinese competitors. He recognizes we need strong incentives to make things in America as we compete with China for the manufacturing jobs of the future. Even with only three years of reliable advanced manufacturing incentives and even less time with workable domestic content standards, manufacturers have raced to build out a U.S. supply chain; reinvigorating communities once hollowed out by bad trade deals. Those manufacturers have hired tens of thousands of workers, delivering middle-class careers, in regions of the country that were decimated by the last China shock that hit manufacturing towns. The manufacturers listed in President Trump’s 100 Days of Investment, who benefit from these tax credits alone, support over 14,000 jobs. Tens of thousands more jobs are planned.
But this growth is at risk. The House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) arbitrarily and prematurely cuts advanced manufacturing and energy deployment incentives, which would cripple American factories and workers by incentivizing a flood of imports from China. That’s because the current energy deployment incentives are tied to project developers using American-made energy components. The credits, particularly with the bonus for using US-made materials and clear and administrable supply chain restrictions, are the only effective tools encouraging developers to use American products rather than heavily subsidized Chinese imports. If the bill is enacted as is, Congress will surrender the U.S. energy market to heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers before American factories have even had time to get to the market.
The Senate has an opportunity to ensure American energy dominance by revising the reconciliation package to save the incentives and place strong restrictions on Chinese components. To effectively leverage domestic content incentives and restrictions on Chinese-controlled supply chains, these credits need to be durable and provide long-term business certainty. The current OBBBA does the opposite - it lays out a short “commence construction” period for the technology neutral investment tax credit that will undermine factories and thousands of workers on track to produce gigawatts of critical solar components before the end of President Trump’s term.
Solar and storage will make up the majority of grid buildout this year – 81% by the current count, and likely the majority during the duration of the Trump administration. The trendline is clear – these technologies will be deployed at a massive scale, whether they are U.S.-made or not. If the incentives expire prematurely as outlined in OBBBA, developers will choose artificially cheap Chinese-made solar, guaranteeing Beijing-controlled goods will generate our electricity for the foreseeable future.
Instead of cutting incentives, we should be focusing on scaling American-made solar for the Energy Dominance agenda. Major utilities, energy developers, and AI companies are using solar to meet demand and are sounding the alarm that rapid expansion of the U.S. electricity supply is vital to American competitiveness. With the U.S. in a race with China to dominate the next generation of AI and advanced manufacturing, cheap, abundant energy is the key ingredient in both. Now is exactly the wrong time to go back on the previous “all of the above” energy strategy. With this bill, Congress is tying our hands behind our backs as we face a fight with China.
While trade actions can provide short-term relief, the reality is that Chinese solar supply chains have been moving for two decades to avoid tariffs. Trade policy alone has not effectively kept Chinese products out. Tax incentives, paired with good trade policy, level the playing field with China. In the words of Secretary Bessent, they are “interlocking parts of an engine designed to drive economic growth and domestic manufacturing.”
Incentives for energy deployment coupled with robust anti-China restrictions and domestic content standards are the policy levers needed to spur investments that support solar manufacturing workers from Ohio to Georgia to Louisiana. These incentives are the primary reason energy developers have demanded American-made products for installations across the country, supporting American workers and making U.S. manufacturing in these industries viable again. If the deployment credits are phased out quickly, it will undermine the reshoring effort, and American workers will yet again lose the market – and their jobs – to China. President Trump would not want his legacy to be killing American advanced energy manufacturing - Congress should make sure it doesn’t happen.
