U.S. Wind Farm Developers Brace For Trade War Fallout

U.S. wind farm project developers continue to announce new wind power capacity in an industry that grew eight percent last year and contributes more than US$1 billion in state and local taxes every year. But the trade war with China and tariffs on Chinese imports threaten to slow down the U.S. wind industry growth. U.S. wind power construction and development jumped to a record level in the first quarter of 2019, with development pipeline increasing by 6,146 megawatts (MW)—more than the capacity of all operational wind farms in California, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said in a recent report. However, the same association and companies in the industry warn that the rapid growth of U.S. wind industry jobs and wind power development could slow down or even decline, due to the tariffs on Chinese imports and the still-alive threat of tariffs on Mexican imports. “We are very concerned about the impact of tariffs on jobs,” the chief executive of AWEA, Tom Kiernan, told CNBC this week. “We would have been hiring more people if it weren’t for the current tariffs. And if the tariffs increase, as the president is proposing, that will either further reduce our growth or could at some point lead to a decline in the number of jobs in the wind industry,” Kiernan added.