Skip to main content

New tariffs pushed on foreign washing machines and solar panels

Electrolux is planning to fight tariffs imposed on washing machines

The Trump administration announced plans in January to impose new taxes on washing machines and solar panels manufactured abroad — and Swedish home appliances company Electrolux is pledging to fight these tariffs.

On Wednesday, Electrolux noted that it had been officially informed by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) of a final tariff rate of 72.41 percent on washing machines imported into the U.S. from Mexico between February 2016 and January 2017. The company plans on contesting this decision “vigorously.”

“It is Electrolux’s position that the DOC set this tariff rate by improperly citing, as the basis for this decision, a failure on behalf of Electrolux to submit data in a timely manner,” the company said in a statement. Furthermore, the company is asserting that the DOC decision does not have legal merit, as the department did not “provide Electrolux actual notice of the relevant documents or the necessary time frame for response.”

Consequently, the company is now planning on appealing the DOC’s decision.

The January tax announcement, which came from the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, was meant to take aim at South Korean washing machine manufacturers and Chinese solar panel producers. The administration says these companies have been selling their goods in the United States for less than their fair market value.

As a result of a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. will now impose duties of up to 30 percent on solar equipment manufactured abroad. Such a move could damage the $28 billion solar energy industry. Eighty percent of the parts used in the U.S. solar industry are imported, and the Solar Energy Industries Association previously projected job losses in the tens of thousands amid months of uncertainty about tax hikes.

Meanwhile, washing machines made by South Korean manufacturers Samsung and LG were deemed “a substantial cause of serious injury” to U.S. manufacturers in the ITC report. In the first year, those products will face a 20 percent tariff on the initial 1.2 million washers imported, and a 50 percent tariff on all machines after that. Those tariffs will eventually decrease to 16 and 40 percent, respectively, in three years.

Samsung, understandingly, is also unhappy by the recent announcement, which is in part the product of a Whirlpool complaint made against the South Korean companies.

A Samsung spokesperson told CNET, “Today’s announcement is a great loss for American consumers and workers. This tariff is a tax on every consumer who wants to buy a washing machine. Everyone will pay more, with fewer choices.”

Ironically, the company announced the opening of its first manufacturing plant in the United States in 2017, in Newberry, South Carolina. Its planned output? Washing machines.

The ITC report targets Chinese solar panel manufacturers nearly nine months after Suniva and SolarWorld, based in China and Germany, respectively, claimed that low-cost Chinese manufacturers were unfairly competing.

Time reports that the increased tariffs may be challenged by China and South Korea at the World Trade Organization, which has previously refused U.S.-imposed tariffs. The solar industry may also attempt to appeal the tariffs to Congress, though success in that appeal is thought to be unlikely.

“Trump wants to show he’s tough on trade, so whatever duties or quotas he imposes will stick, whatever individual senators or congressmen might say,” Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Time via email.

Updated on March 15, 2018: Electrolux will fight the tariffs imposed on washing machines. 

Editors' Recommendations

Dyllan Furness
Dyllan Furness is a freelance writer from Florida. He covers strange science and emerging tech for Digital Trends, focusing…
On the fence about buying solar panels? Tesla now offers them for rent
tesla panasonic low profile solar panels 1

If you’ve been trying to decide whether or not to purchase solar panels for your home, Tesla has a new way to entice you: Renting them.
With solar rentals, Tesla says “customers get the best from solar power — clean, cheap energy to power homes and vehicles — without upfront costs or decades-long agreements. In fact, customers can get solar power with one click, instead of lengthy consultations and piles of paperwork.”
The company is offering the option to rent solar panels in six states: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New Mexico.

In order to participate, you need to be the homeowner and be a ratepayer with one of the specific utility companies Telsa is working with in your state. Rentals include the panels, as well as any other necessary hardware, installation, support, and maintenance costs.
The company is offering the service in small, medium, and large sizes. A small system is 3.8 kilowatts, a medium system is 7.6 kW,  and a large one is 11.4 kW. Monthly rental costs for a small system vary by state and range from $50 to $65 a month. Tesla also has some estimates on how much power those panels are expected to generate each year.
Like all good deals, there is a catch: If you decide you don’t want to rent solar from Tesla anymore, you’ll be forced to pay a $1,500 removal fee to the company to take down the equipment. That fee can’t be waived. However, if you decide to sell your home you can transfer the monthly subscription to your home’s new owners, so you don’t have to remove the panels from your roof prior to the sale.
Panels can be upgraded once you install them, but can not be downgraded unless you want to pay that $1,500 fee.
Last year, Tesla started working with Panasonic on a new catalog of solar panels that blend into a customer’s roof, with no visible hardware. The panels were first announced in 2017, but were installed on their first roof in early 2018.
Tesla’s solar panel rental program comes days after the company lowered the price of its solar panels, in some cases dropping the price per watt to as low was $1.75, 16% lower than the national average of $2.09.

Read more
A giant new solar farm in Texas will harness the sun’s rays to … brew beer?
Aerial Solar Image

Since 1926, Pecos County, Texas has been home to one of the largest oil fields in the United States. To date, it has produced more than a billion barrels of oil and, experts suggest, there is another billion barrels yet to be tapped.

But drive through Pecos County a couple of years from now, and it might not be the giant Yates Oil Field that most commands your attention. Rather, your eye may be drawn by an enormous solar power farm, on track to be the seventh largest ever built, stretching as far as the eye can see, for around 2,000 acres in total. As Angie Slaughter, one of the people behind the project, told Digital Trends, that’s “about 1,500 football fields of nothing but solar panels.”

Read more
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more