China’s Solar Firms Struggle as Trade War Adds to Headwinds

As if China’s solar panels and equipment companies haven’t already been reeling from low product prices and overcapacity, the U.S.-China trade war and the triple-digit tariffs are adding insult to injury to the profitability of the Chinese solar manufacturing industry.All top Chinese solar equipment producers booked losses for the first quarter of the year, and blamed the continued losses on low product prices and the trade and tariff turbulence with the new U.S. President Donald Trump.JinkoSolar, for example, booked a net loss of $181.7 million for the first quarter of 2025.“Prices across the main segments of the solar industrial chain were low in the first quarter. This, combined with disruptions in demand caused by changes in international trade policies, pressured profit margins in each segment of the integrated solar supply chain,” Xiande Li, JinkoSolar’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.“Due to a year-over-year decline in shipments to the U.S. market and a continued decline in higher-price overseas orders, our module prices and profitability decreased both year-over-year and sequentially.”Solar manufacturers were already subject to tariffs when exporting to the United States, even before President Trump’s trade offensive for ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on the rest of the world, most of all on China.The Chinese solar wafers, panels, switchers, and other equipment producers have also been struggling on the domestic market amid overcapacity that China’s authorities moved to address only in late 2024.The Chinese solar panel market remains oversupplied, and this glut could last up to two more years, one of the top manufacturers, Longi Green Energy Technology, said last year.Earlier in 2024, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association said that China urgently needs consolidation in the solar manufacturing industry as overcapacity and price wars are leading local companies to a race to the bottom.By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com