Why is this dispute happening? The short version is that Trump and his advisers believe that tariffs will help the US economy by encouraging factories here, reducing trade deficit and punishing US product interruptions in other countries.
“We will spare our domestic industrial base on April 2, announcing taxes on almost every US trade partner, announcing taxes on almost every US trade partner,” Trump said. “We will open foreign markets and break foreign trade barriers, and eventually more production at home means strong competition and low prices for consumers.”
Tariff is a tax that is received by the government on imports. Since the US government has increased its prices, other countries have taken retaliation with their growth.
The further increase in chaos is that policies often change, the president often announces change on social media, as has been on the European Union in recent times.
To drill parts of the report dealing with renewable sources, I talked to Chris Apple, Vice Chairman of Wood Mackenzie and Renewable Sources. This is what is modified for length and explanation:
Dan Gyrano: For renewable energy industries, is the big problem that revenues make everything more expensive, or more than?
Chris Apple: Certainly, things get more expensive. I think the second challenge, and this is a unique infinite in the power business, is that the rule is a heavy hand. And thus there are many utility Americans that have to go through a large regulatory process to get the approval of what they want to build. Being in a world where there is a lot of tariff uncertainty, they do not know what the cost they want to build is to build. It is especially challenging to be able to visit this industry, and it affects renewable sources, saying, say, other sectors like gas or coal, because we rely on import of goods at such a large degree, especially for battery storage, where we import imports from China.
With battery storage, efforts have been made to increase the scope of manufacturing in the United States. How would you feature where you stand?
Many early days. The purpose of many battery manufacturing within the United States is to provide batteries to EV vehicles, not stationary utility scale storage projects. And therefore, the amount of manufacturing capacity demanding this goods is more than 90 % of the need for the United States.
Chris Apple is the Vice Chairman of Wood Mackenzie for electricity and renewable sources.
Photo: Wood McKenzi
