By Josh Saul, Shoko Oda, and Jennifer A Dlouhy
America’s solar industry has a strategy for dulling US tariffs: hoard.
Developers have been amassing piles of solar panels for more than a year, in part because of other US levies imposed before President Donald Trump took office in January. The stockpile is now so big that analysts estimate there’s roughly 50 gigawatts worth of the equipment in warehouses. That’s enough panels to power about 8.6 million homes.
The backup inventory will help ease the immediate sting of Trump’s new levies. That’s especially true since so much of the country’s supply comes from Southeast Asia, a part of the world that was hit by some of the highest tariff rates. It’s a small silver lining for US solar developers, who have grappled with the headwinds of previous duties, high interest rates, slow permitting timelines and the risk of tax credits being repealed.
BloombergGreen
Of course, there are caveats.
US developers are projected to build about 54 gigawatts of total solar capacity this year, according to BloombergNEF. Much of that will be for big solar farms, but most of what’s in warehouses are panels designed for rooftops.
At the same time, the industry is still facing longstanding duties on China that were extended to some solar exports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam in 2023. About 80% of US solar equipment was imported last year from those four countries, according to BNEF. But even before Trump’s latest move, solar panels and cells imported from parts of Southeast Asia faced levies that could top 200%.
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