Cloudy with a chance of bankruptcy: US tariffs hurt China’s solar firms
One-third of China’s 121 listed solar producers are in the red; more than 50 along the supply chain have filed for bankruptcy this year
The rain and gloomy skies during the SNEC PV Conference – the biggest in China’s solar-panel manufacturing industry – summed up the mood in the market, whose major players congregated in Shanghai earlier this month for the four-day annual event.
The scale was noticeably smaller this year. Several leading companies opted out for a variety of reasons, including tight budgets. More tellingly, CEOs from major producers Longi Green Technology and Tongwei – keynote speakers last year – gave it a miss.
The weariness is not surprising. The industry, billed as one of China’s three new economic drivers along with electric vehicle and lithium battery manufacturing, is facing a double whammy: producers are swimming in a sea of red amid a price war and supply glut at home, while tariffs are blocking access to export markets.
Prices in every segment of the solar panel supply chain plummeted by 60 to 80 per cent in 2024 from a peak in 2023, according to the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, with 39 of the nation’s 121 listed producers in the red. Losses in the photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing value chain reached US$40 billion, according to Gao Jifan, chairman of Trina Solar. Including other business lines, the tally was US$60 billion, he said.