U.S. financial markets plunged again on Monday amid fears that Trump’s escalating trade war could derail the global economy. Adding to those concerns, a new report highlighted by E&E News warned that Trump’s latest tariffs “spell chaos for clean energy markets.” His latest move to slap a minimum 10% tariff on nearly all global imports, plus much steeper rates on goods from key allies and trading partners, will drive up costs on critical components needed to build solar panels, wind turbines, power lines, and grid infrastructure. As electricity demand rises and Trump’s tariffs make it harder to expand affordable energy, utilities are likely to pass those higher costs on to consumers.

Americans’ worries about inflation and rising prices defined Trump’s election victory. But despite repeated promises to cut energy prices in half, his chaotic economic agenda has delivered the opposite: higher prices and growing uncertainty. Now, as clean energy manufacturers reel from the fallout of Trump’s tariff taxes, Republicans are doubling down— pushing to repeal the very investments fueling a U.S. manufacturing boom and triggering his biggest price hike yet.

ICYMI: E&E News: Trump’s tariffs ‘spell chaos’ for renewables, grid batteries

By Christa Marshall
April 7, 2025

Key Points:

• President Donald Trump’s tariffs could create significant disruptions for low-carbon industries that are already under strain because of potential rollbacks of key tax credits.
  
  
• Analysts are predicting that wind, solar and clean energy manufacturing could see higher costs and project delays after Trump announced 10 percent tariffs on nearly all U.S. imports last week, along with higher tariffs on some trading partners. Trump’s tariffs “spell chaos for clean energy markets," research firm BloombergNEF said in a report Friday.
  
  
• Grid batteries, which are tied to many solar projects, are “particularly exposed,” said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, the firm's head of trade and supply chains. The technology is now facing a roughly 65 percent tariff that could rise to more than 80 percent by next year.
  
  
• Most grid batteries come from China, which Trump has stacked with tariffs on top of the ones implemented during the Biden administration. Higher costs for storage because of Chinese tariffs could have a ripple effect for renewable energy projects, as well as plans to install batteries to even out grid fluctuations, Vagneur-Jones said.
  
  
• “With higher-than-expected costs, project developers and offtakers will likely need to consider delaying and canceling early-stage projects,” BloombergNEF said in its report.
  
  
• Prior to the new tariffs, grid battery leaders had warned of growing headwinds for the industry, including grid interconnection challenges and uncertainty about the future of tax credits under the climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act. High tariffs combined with rollbacks in government incentives could stall growth in grid storage within two years after projects already in the queue are deployed, according to industry observers.
  
  
• Trump's tariffs also arrive as the surging solar industry is projected to supply more than 60 percent of new installations on the grid this year. Before Trump's announcement, the industry already faced tariffs of up to 271 percent on Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia, which supply the majority of solar panels coming into the U.S.
  
  
• “Trump’s additional tariffs would double down on that effort,” Coco Zhang, vice president of environmental, social and governance (ESG) research at financial services and analysis firm ING, said in a research note last week.
  
  
• Like solar, the wind industry could see higher costs and project delays because of the tariffs, but the effects won’t be as serious as they are with grid batteries, Vagneur-Jones said.
  
  
• “There is a much more local supply chain that can be relied on [for onshore wind], so the impact is more muted” than it is for storage, he said. It’s a different picture for offshore wind, which is facing high costs and unique policy challenges and is more reliant on imports from Europe, he said.
  
  
• The emerging clean energy manufacturing industry could also be stymied by the tariffs, analysts said. The sector is reliant on components from China that are now subject to tariffs of more than 50 percent.
  
  
• Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, noted that solar manufacturing has grown sixfold in the past several years. Sudden changes in policy can be “incredibly disruptive,” she said.
  
  
• Zhang said the tariffs could hurt domestic energy manufacturers reliant on raw materials from overseas. Canada, for example, supplies roughly 20 percent of U.S. cobalt used in battery manufacturing. She also pointed out that steel — subject to an earlier Trump tariff — makes up to 79 percent of the mass of a wind turbine.
  
  
• “In the short term, clean energy manufacturers might renegotiate contracts, absorb higher prices with IRA tax credits, or pass costs to consumers,” she said.

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