President Donald Trump’s attempt to create U.S. jobs by taxing solar panel imports could backfire.
That’s according to the CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group, who says it’s domestic workers that will feel the pain.
“We have been the fastest growing form of new energy...and this is putting the brakes on that crazy growth,” Abigail Ross Hopper told Cheddar in an interview. “These are not people who are looking for what nationality the company they work for is. They just want to feed their families and pay their mortgages. And those are the people whose jobs are at risk.”
Earlier this week President Trump signed a law that would impose a 30 percent tariff on imported solar panel and sells, a move the administration says will encourage domestic manufacturing.
But the SEIA says the vast majority of the 260,000 Americans employed in the industry work in peripheral industries like installation. Ross Hopper says the bill will result in 23,000 layoffs this year and delay or cancel billions of dollars of investment in the sector.
She also says it might dissuade U.S. consumers from going green.
“Most [businesses and consumers] want to choose solar because it saves them money,” she said. “This decision changes that calculus.”
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/solar-power-in-america).
Australia has garnered enough international support to defer for two years an attempt by the United Nations’ cultural organization to downgrade the Great Barrier Reef’s World Heritage status because of damage caused by climate change.
The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week from the lowest point of the pandemic, even as the job market appears to be rebounding on the strength of a reopened economy
Dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies called stablecoins are on the rise, and U.S. regulators are taking notice.
Senate Republicans have rejected an effort to begin debate on a bipartisan infrastructure deal that senators brokered with President Joe Biden.
While the Biden administration has been busy undoing some of former President Trump's legacy decisions, the latest military branch, the U.S. Space Force established in 2019, isn't going anywhere.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke to the head of Unilever after its subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem.
Canada will begin letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens into Canada on Aug. 9, and those from the rest of the world on Sept. 7.
The Biden administration is blaming China for a hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier this year.
The State Department will offer rewards up to $10 million for information leading to the identification of anyone engaged in foreign state-sanctioned malicious cyber activity, including ransomware attacks, against critical U.S. infrastructure.
The U.S. government is starting to deposit child tax credit money into the accounts of more than 35 million families.
