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Solar manufacturing is booming. Advocates say it could go bust without incentives
An employee works on a solar panel inside a Qcells factory in Dalton, Ga.
Mike Stewart/AP/AP
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Mike Stewart/AP/AP
A couple of years ago, Mick McDaniel started a company in Indianapolis to make solar panels in the United States. Then-President Joe Biden had just signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a law packed with tax incentives for clean energy. America’s solar market was about to take off.
Since then, tens of billions of dollars have poured into solar factories that are operating or under development, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, or SEIA, which advocates on behalf of the field. Once those factories are all finished, the facilities could create close to 60,000 manufacturing jobs, the trade group has said.
But those investments are now at risk.
Congressional Republicans are on the verge of rolling back clean-energy tax credits as part of a huge tax-and-spending bill that’s a cornerstone of President Trump’s second-term agenda. On the chopping block are incentives that encourage solar developers to buy American-made products, like solar panels and components.
Abruptly unwinding the incentives would threaten a decade-long push to onshore solar manufacturing and challenge China’s dominance of the sector, according to industry executives and analysts.
“What I see two years out is low-cost will once again drive demand in this market,” says McDaniel, general manager of Bila Solar. He adds, “That’s going to be a hard road for some of us who have [higher costs] than panels made over in China or Southeast Asia.”
President Trump said in a recent post on Truth Social, “I HATE ‘GREEN TAX CREDITS’” in the tax-and-spending bill Congress is negotiating.
Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
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Mark Schiefelbein/AP/AP
President Trump supported solar manufacturing in his first term
Since 2022, when Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, companies have invested $9.1 billion in U.S. solar factories that are operating and another $36.7 billion in facilities that are under construction or in development, according to SEIA.
This year, U.S. factories will be able to make enough solar panels to meet most of the country’s demand, the trade group said.
Asked about the potential impacts of ending clean-energy tax credits that help domestic solar factories, a White House spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said in a statement to NPR that the “radical climate initiatives” of the Biden administration are costing Americans billions of dollars. “Rather than using taxpayer dollars to subsidize uneconomic energy sources to meet vague climate change goals, President Trump is unleashing energy sources that are economical and will drive down bills for everyday families,” Rogers said.
But Trump himself tried to boost U.S. solar manufacturing during his first term. In 2018, Trump approved tariffs on imported solar cells and panels after the U.S. International Trade Commission found that a flood of imports hurt American companies. In a recent post on Truth Social, Trump complained that China dominates renewable energy supply chains.
Renewables are cost competitive with fossil-fueled energy — even without subsidies, according to the financial firm Lazard. But manufacturers and industry analysts say U.S. solar developers still need incentives to use American-made products.
If the tax credits disappear too soon, companies building solar plants will “buy the cheaper foreign panels to get that cost down as much as you possibly can,” says Doug Lewin, an energy consultant in Texas. “And that leaves the American manufacturer of solar modules [and components] just stranded.”
Trump’s 2018 tariffs helped protect domestic manufacturers, says Scott Moskowitz, vice president of market strategy and industry affairs at Qcells, which announced it was building a Georgia solar factory in 2018 shortly after Trump set the import tariffs. However, Moskowitz says the tax incentives passed under the Biden administration were key to creating demand for solar panels and components that are produced in the U.S.
“It’s not a question of whether or not the country is going to install solar if these provisions are removed or phased out too quickly,” Moskowitz says. “It’s just a matter of where [project developers] are going to get the product from.”
The stakes go beyond who supplies America’s solar market. With more time, Moskowitz says U.S. manufacturers could scale up the size of their operations to compete globally.
“You want to set up that counterweight to China,” Lewin says. “You want to be able to tell Pakistan and Latin America and everywhere else, ‘No, you can go through the United States for this vital resource for the 21st century. You don’t have to go to China.’”
An aerial view of a solar plant in Kayenta, Arizona, in 2024.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Brandon Bell/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Presidents have tried for years to make America a solar manufacturer
Every president since Barack Obama has used tariffs to try to nurture domestic solar manufacturing by raising costs on imported panels and components — first from China and later from Southeast Asia, as well.
However, tariffs on their own weren’t enough to build a manufacturing sector big enough to meet U.S. solar demand. That’s why the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act were hailed as a breakthrough by advocates of the domestic solar industry.
“We were already seeing an increase in manufacturing before that, but the IRA was like throwing gas on that fire,” says Lewin, the Texas energy consultant.
But just as American manufacturing is taking off, the outlook for the country’s solar market has now been thrown into doubt by Congress.
Legislative text released by the Senate Finance Committee earlier this month calls for phasing out tax credits for solar plants starting next year. Under current law, those credits, which encourage companies to use American-made products, are scheduled to start phasing out in 2032 or when greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector are 25% of 2022 levels, whichever comes later.
“I expect to see a couple of painful years in the U.S. solar industry, period,” says Craig Lawrence, a partner at the investment firm Energy Transition Ventures. “But I ultimately think it bounces back.”
High voltage power lines in Pembroke Pines, Florida.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Supporters push for slow tax-credit phaseout
The broader impact of rolling back incentives will depend on the details of whatever lawmakers ultimately agree to.
Without tax credits, America would build fewer clean-energy projects and use more natural gas to generate electricity, according to a study this winter commissioned by the Clean Energy Buyers Association, whose members range from Amazon to ExxonMobil to Walmart.
“There will be some companies that go under if they do this. But we will still see solar built. We’ll just see less of it, and it’ll be more expensive,” Lewin says.
Those costs are expected to be passed on to homeowners, renters and businesses through higher electricity bills, according to the Clean Energy Buyers Association’s study.
Limiting renewable energy development also raises concerns about electric reliability, says Heather Reams, president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a right-of-center advocacy group.
“You’re looking at the lights going out and the air conditioning going off in the hot summer,” Reams says. “And then not meeting the [electricity] demands of tomorrow, leaving the U.S. behind competitively.”
Industry executives and analysts say clean energy projects are crucial to meet rising power demand from things like data centers and factories, because the plants can be constructed quickly and produce electricity that is relatively cheap.
Reams’ group has called for lawmakers to delay phasing out the tax credits at least until after 2027. “I don’t think anyone’s arguing they need to be here until the end of time,” she says. “But market certainty is something that all business owners understand.”
Manufacturers are already struggling with the looming policy changes.
“If my market is smaller, what kind of decisions do I have to make about investment, hiring and growth on my side to right size my business for that future that will be smaller?” says McDaniel, the Indianapolis solar manufacturer. “We don’t know how much that demand side will get impacted and how much smaller that market will be.”
With Congress under pressure to deliver Trump a tax-and-spending bill by July 4, solar manufacturers and their supporters are running out of time to sway Republican lawmakers.
“They’re getting ready to walk off the field,” Lewin says, “and cede the 21st century to the Chinese.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks as FBI Director Kash Patel listens during a news conference at the Justice Department on Tuesday in Washington.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
WASHINGTON — The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted Tuesday on federal fraud charges alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to pay informants to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting, with payments of at least $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to people affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, the National Socialist Party of America and other extremist groups.
“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” Blanche said.
The civil rights group faces charges including wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in the case brought by the Justice Department in Alabama, where the organization is based.
The indictment came shortly after SPLC revealed the existence of a criminal investigation into its program to pay informants to infiltrate extremist groups and gather information on their activities. The group said the program was used to monitor threats of violence and the information was often shared with local and federal law enforcement.
SPLC CEO Bryan Fair said the organization “will vigorously defend ourselves, our staff, and our work.”
Blanche said the money was passed from the center through two different bank accounts before being loaded onto prepaid cards to give to the members of the extremist groups, which also included the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club. The group never disclosed to donors details of the informant program, he said.
“They’re required to under the laws associated with a nonprofit to have certain transparency and honesty in what they’re telling donors they’re going to spend money on and what their mission statement is and what they’re raising money doing,” he said.
The indictment includes details on at least nine unnamed informants were paid by the SPLC through a secret program that prosecutors say began in the 1980s. Within the SPLC, they were known as field sources or “the Fs,” according to the indictment. One informant was paid more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023 while affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance, the indictment said. Another was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
The SPLC said the program was kept quiet to protect the safety of informants.
“When we began working with informants, we were living in the shadow of the height of the Civil Rights Movement, which had seen bombings at churches, state-sponsored violence against demonstrators, and the murders of activists that went unanswered by the justice system,” Fair said. “There is no question that what we learned from informants saved lives.”
The center has been targeted by Republicans
The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1971 and used civil litigation to fight white supremacist groups. The nonprofit has become a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.
The investigation could add to concerns that Trump’s Republican administration is using the Justice Department to go after conservative opponents and his critics. It follows a number of other investigations into Trump foes that have raised questions about whether the law enforcement agency has been turned into a political weapon.
The SPLC has faced intense criticism from conservatives, who have accused it of unfairly maligning right-wing organizations as extremist groups because of their viewpoints. The center regularly condemns Trump’s rhetoric and policies around voting rights, immigration and other issues.
The center came under fresh scrutiny after the assassination last year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed attention to its characterization of the group that Kirk founded and led. The center included a section on that group, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024” that described the group as “A Case Study of the Hard Right in 2024.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said last year that the agency was severing its relationship with the center, which had long provided law enforcement with research on hate crime and domestic extremism. Patel said the center had been turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States.
House Republicans hosted a hearing centered on the SPLC in December, saying it coordinated efforts with President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration “to target Christian and conservative Americans and deprive them of their constitutional rights to free speech and free association.”
On the night of her resounding win in last fall’s election for Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger told her supporters that they had sent a message to the world. “Virginia,” she said in the opening lines of her victory speech, “chose pragmatism over partisanship.”
But even then it was clear that the first big issue of her term would be as partisan as it gets: a proposed amendment by her fellow Democrats to allow them to gerrymander the state’s 11 congressional districts.
The push to redraw the Virginia map was another salvo in a barrage of redistricting spurred by President Trump in a bid to keep Republicans in control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.
Virginians vote on Tuesday on whether to adopt the proposed map, and if the “Yes” vote wins, Democrats could end up with as many as 10 seats, up from the six they hold now. The redistricting battles of the last year would end up in something of a draw, with gains for Democrats in California and Virginia offsetting gains for Republicans in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina — unless Florida lawmakers decide in the coming weeks to draw a new, more Republican-friendly map.
Historically, redrawing of congressional maps has been done each decade after the U.S. census. But with Republicans holding such a slim majority in the House, Mr. Trump began by pressing Texas to redraw its maps, touching off the wave of gerrymandering
Virginia Democratic legislators rolled out their redistricting plan last October, setting in motion the state’s lengthy amendment process just as the campaign for governor was entering its final weeks. At the time, Ms. Spanberger expressed support for the plan, though she emphasized that its passage was up to the legislature and then to the voters.
But even if her formal role in the process was relatively minor — Ms. Spanberger signed the bill setting the date for the referendum — the politics of the effort has loomed over the first few months of her term. Her support for the amendment has drawn accusations of hypocrisy from the right and complaints from some on the left that she has not been outspoken enough in her advocacy.
“There’s always going to be somebody who wants me to do something differently,” the governor said in an interview on Saturday at a rally in support of the amendment outside a home in Northern Virginia. “I will always make someone unhappy, and I will always make someone happy.”
Ms. Spanberger, a former C.I.A. officer and three-term congresswoman, won a 15-point victory in 2025 after running on a campaign focused on pocketbook issues. Centrism has been her political brand since she was first elected to the House in 2018, flipping a district that had long leaned to the right.
Now Republicans campaigning against the amendment have made Ms. Spanberger a prime target, deriding her as “Governor Bait-and-Switch” and highlighting an interview in August 2025 in which she said she had “no plans to redistrict Virginia.”
“This was the perfect opportunity for her to show that she is the middle-of-the-road suburban mom that she portrayed herself as,” said Glen Sturtevant, a Republican state senator. He dismissed the notion that this was an effort that had been thrust upon her, pointing out that she had signed the bill setting the date for the referendum. “She is certainly an active participant in this whole process,” he said.
Republicans have eagerly highlighted recent polls suggesting that Ms. Spanberger’s honeymoon is over, though because governors in Virginia cannot serve two consecutive terms, public approval is less of a pressure point than it might be elsewhere. Some of her political adversaries have tied the drop in her ratings to her involvement in the campaign for the amendment.
But a number of factors are at play in those sagging poll numbers. Some on the right are irked by her support of standard Democratic priorities like gun control measures and limits to cooperation with federal immigration agents.
But some of the most vociferous criticism of her from Republicans, up to and including the president, has been for a host of proposed taxes and tax hikes in the legislature — on everything from dog grooming to dry cleaning — that she in fact had nothing do with. Most of those taxes, which were floated by various lawmakers, never even came up for a vote.
But Ms. Spanberger did not publicly hit back against these attacks until recent days, a delay that some Democrats say was costly.
“She let other people define her,” said Scott Surovell, the State Senate majority leader.
Mr. Surovell’s frustration echoed a growing discontent among Democrats about the governor’s recent moves. For all the Republican criticism of her, some operatives and lawmakers said, Ms. Spanberger has not been aggressive enough in pushing for Democratic priorities, redistricting among them.
This criticism broke out into the open in recent days, after the governor made scores of amendments to bills that had passed the General Assembly. Some lawmakers and Democratic allies accused her of unexpectedly diluting long-sought goals like expanded public sector unions and a legal retail marketplace for cannabis.
“Our party base is looking for us to stand up and fight and advocate and deliver,” said Mr. Surovell, who represents a solidly Democratic district in Northern Virginia. “It’s hard to deliver when you’re standing in the middle of the road.”
In the interview, Ms. Spanberger insisted that she supported the purpose of many of the bills but had to make amendments to ensure that her administration could implement them.
And she said she had been explicit in her support of the redistricting effort, appearing in statewide TV ads encouraging people to vote “Yes” even as an anti-amendment campaign has sent out mailers suggesting that the governor opposes the effort.
But she said she had never been in a position to barnstorm the state as Gov. Gavin Newsom did in the months leading up to the redistricting referendum that passed in California. Mr. Newsom is a second-term governor in a much bluer state, she said, while she only recently took office and has been “in the crush of their legislative session,” with hundreds of bills to read and examine in a short period.
“Those who may not be focused on the governing and only on the politics, they’re going to want me to do politics 100 percent of the time,” she said. “And for people who care about the governing and not the politics, they’re going to want me to do governing 100 percent of the time.”
Her preference, as she has often made apparent, is for the governing over the politicking. But she acknowledged that it is all part of the job.
Asked if she lamented that the highest-profile issue of her term so far was such a polarizing matter, rather than the cost-of-living policies she emphasized on the campaign trail, she said: “Any person in elected office wants to talk about the thing they want to talk about all the time, and that’s it. So I won’t say ‘No’ to that question.”
new video loaded: Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
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Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
The musician D4vd was charged with murder on Monday, seven months after the police said that the body of a teenage girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, had been found in the trunk of his Tesla. D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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“On April 23, 2025, as has been alleged by the complaint, Celeste, a 14-year-old at that time, went to Mr. Burke’s house in the Hollywood Hills. She was never heard from again.” “These charges include the most serious charges that a D.A.‘s office can bring. That is first-degree murder with special circumstances. The special circumstances being lying in wait, committing this crime for financial gain or murdering a witness in an investigation. These special circumstances carry with it, along with the first-degree murder charge, a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.” “We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Revis Hernandez nor was he the cause of her death.”
By Jackeline Luna
April 20, 2026
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