If you’re looking for a cause that unifies Americans of all political stripes across our often divided nation, one has emerged. One threat managed to coalesce dozens of congressional Republicans and Democrats, governors of both red and blue states, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the Heritage Foundation. It’s a request by two failed, foreign-owned companies — Chinese-owned Suniva and German-owned SolarWorld — for tariffs and quotas on imported solar cells that would approximately double the price of solar panels in the U.S.
The strong bipartisan opposition is no surprise. Nearly 90 percent of Americans voiced support for solar in a recent Pew poll. Moreover, the price increases that would result from attempting to bail out these two companies, which employed 2,000 people at their peak, would eliminate 88,000 construction and installation jobs.
While these potential solar job losses have understandably dominated coverage of the trade case, the proposed import taxes will have negative impacts on industries beyond solar — including the financial technology (fintech) sector where my company, Mosaic operates.
Four years ago, Mosaic saw how cumbersome it was to obtain loans for home solar installations. Mosaic recognized the enormous opportunity for solar-specific financing and created a simple process that allows homeowners to apply for and receive a loan in less than 10 minutes.
The results have been dramatic: in the same way that financing from U.S. automakers has enabled millions of Americans to afford cars, the creation of new finance products and seamless technology-based processes like ours has helped make it possible for over one million homeowners to go solar and add jobs in non-solar sectors. It’s a free market success story of innovation expanding consumer choice, stimulating competition, driving down costs, creating jobs in additional industries, and helping everyday Americans save thousands of dollars on their electricity bills.
Mosaic is not alone: many companies in the fintech industry are engaged in this business, and institutional investors are also investing billions in the American solar market. New import tariffs would create uncertainty and have a widespread chilling effect on the deployment of more capital. Similar stories abound in other industries that are counting on solar’s continued growth, including homebuilders, producers of steel and other raw materials, and other companies that are threatened by this misguided trade case in ways that aren’t even being considered.
Like most Americans we believe that the way to build a thriving economy is through innovation and robust competition — the entrepreneurial spirit that powers so many companies in the Bay Area and beyond and not the job-destroying tariffs and quotas that Suniva and SolarWorld are asking for.
That’s why we’re optimistic that President Trump will make the right call and choose to protect U.S. workers instead of bailing out foreign-owned companies. After all, what could be more “America First” than that?
Billy Parish is the Founder and CEO of Mosaic, the nation’s leading direct-to-customer solar lender.
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