Paper ballots win last spot in Democracy Madness Final Four

In late June, the Solar Energy Industries Association confirmed that the United States now has enough module manufacturing capacity, nearly 65 gigawatts annually, to meet its entire domestic demand on paper. It was a genuine milestone. But cell production, the more technically demanding upstream step that determines whether those modules are truly American-made, still stands at barely 3.2 gigawatts. The gap between assembly capacity and genuine supply chain independence is where trade policy currently lives, and where it is doing the most damage.

A May 2026 report from Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy documented in detail what clean energy project developers have known for two years: US-China trade tensions have not reduced American reliance on Chinese-made solar, battery, and electric vehicle components. They have lengthened the supply chains, added cost, increased lead times, and shifted production nominally to Southeast Asian countries where Chinese firms own much of the manufacturing infrastructure. The net effect on US energy independence is close to zero. The effect on the cost of clean energy deployment is measurable and negative.