alt Hacker NewsYes this is the most glaring issue. There also two disconnects later in the article: at the end it laments how china has been increasing transformer manufacturing but the US government has done nothing. Then in the next sentence its mentions trumps tariffs have increased transformer costs, I. E. Government action to increase domestic production. It also glosses over the new DOE rule on how transformers are made…so maybe there is a larger story there relevant to the lack of supply.
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We had targeted policies under Biden to increase US production of grid components. This entailed invoking the DPA and setting aside millions for manufacturing improvements. Trump paused all that and created blanket tariffs that don’t seem like they’re designed to onshore US manufacturing of these very specific components but do increase all the material costs. This is not an easy thing to fix with dumb tariffs, and it’s really easy to make everything worse.
Tariffs don't help onshore manufacturing when they apply to the materials that the manufacturing needs and might evaporate before the manufacturing capability is actually created. Tariffs needs to be applied carefully and consistently to actually encourage this.