"But there’s a sunnier outlook in 2019, in part thanks to the Green New Deal."
"In 2016, the solar industry created 1 in every 50 new jobs in the United States. A year later, that number decreased for the first time in seven years as President Donald Trump’s threat to slap import fees on photovoltaic panels loomed.
That decline continued for a second year in a row in 2018, new data show.
The Solar Foundation’s annual job census, released Tuesday morning, found employment fell 3.2 percent in 2018 compared with the previous year, equivalent to 7,928 jobs in an industry that employed 242,343 workers as of November.
The 30 percent tariffs Trump approved on all imported solar panels 13 months ago are the primary cause of the fall, the researchers determined after speaking to more than 3,000 companies via nearly 60,000 phone calls and 49,000 emails. Delayed or insufficient state-level incentives prompted declines in a handful of states that once led the solar boom."
Alexander C. Kaufman reports for HuffPost February 12, 2019.
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