This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, February 5th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Joe Biden wants the U.S. to be a leader in producing renewable energy technology, but for some reason he's decided to keep

tariffs on materials for solar panels that were left over from the Trump administration.

Gabriela Beaumont Smith is a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

She says it's time to let the solar tariffs die.

So in 2018, President Trump imposed tariffs and tariff rate quotas on solar cells and solar panels.

And what are solar cells?

Solar cells are the part of solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity.

So the tariffs that were imposed are what are known as Safeguard Tariffs and they are imposed under the guise of preventing or remedying serious

injury to the domestic industry as more import competition arises and Trump set these tariffs on a

schedule over four years starting at 30% in 2018 and ending at 18% in 2021. Now this week these tariffs are

supposed to be expiring so President Biden can choose whether to extend them

or whether to do nothing and we will have these tariffs

no more.

So you're telling me that any day now, Joe Biden could announce something to render this podcast useless to my audience.

Is that basically what you're saying?

No, because there have been reports that President Biden will maintain these tariffs.

The USITC, the International Trade Commission, put out a report in December.

It's a 586 page report that promoted maintaining these tariffs for another

four years. They would leave them at the current rate 18% for four more years and would

slightly reduce the tariff rate.

...