The 30,000 jobs lost figure comes from a hypothetical exercise assuming that if tariffs are imposed on Southeast Asian solar panels, the full cost of the tariffs will be passed onto panel purchasers and raise the price of panels.

All the evidence from the past decade proves this is not the case. When tariffs were first imposed on Chinese solar panels in 2011, importers made the same claim. Yet since then, solar panel prices have continued to fall. According to the federal National Renewable Energy Lab, solar panel prices have fallen about 85% in the last decade, from $2.50 a watt to 40 cents a watt. Further, other industries show the same pattern. The U.S. International Trade Commission recently published a study showing that a 25% tariff on steel imports led to the U.S. steel price rising by only 2.4%, in line with inflation.

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