In Trump’s first year, the U.S. lost almost 10,000 solar jobs
Josiah Neeley directs energy policy research at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank. He told me that the projection of 23,000 lost jobs was “plausible” and “not a crazy number.”
“The entire industry is going to shed a lot of jobs because of the higher panel prices,” he said. “The solar trade case is typical of tariffs in that they are justified as a way to protect American jobs and industry, but they end up hurting jobs and industry. And in this case, since most of the [U.S. solar] jobs are in installation and marketing, making panels more expensive is going to hurt.”
“It’s a big thing—what is the overall posture of the government going to be? The [Perry proposal] didn’t go anywhere, but there are clearly political forces out there that want to prop up certain types of energy at the expense of others,” Neeley said.
