Earlier this week, President Biden announced emergency measures to get the solar power industry moving again after a major standstill that had pitted domestic manufacturers against solar panel installers. WSJ’s Phred Dvorak explains how tiny Auxin Solar became the most-hated solar company in America.

- The Most-Hated Solar Company in America 

- Biden Invokes Emergency Power in Bid to Resolve Solar Import Dispute 

This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Ryan Knutson: For the past few months, the solar power industry in the U.S. has been in disarray, and it all started because of this one small company.

Phred Dvorak: Auxin is a tiny solar panel manufacturer. It's based in San Jose, California.

Ryan Knutson: And is this a company that anybody has ever heard of?

Phred Dvorak: Very few people ever heard of Auxin.

Ryan Knutson: That's our colleague, Phred Dvorak, who's been looking into the company. Auxin is one of just a handful of solar panel manufacturers in the U.S. Most solar panels are made in Asia, and Auxin thinks that Chinese companies aren't playing fair. So they filed a complaint with the U.S. government.

Phred Dvorak: They were saying that Chinese manufacturers are evading U.S. tariffs by routing their operations through third countries in Southeast Asia.

Ryan Knutson: And that one complaint threw the entire solar industry into chaos.

Phred Dvorak: It brought everything to a screeching halt. It effectively halted almost all imports of solar panels and solar cells to the U.S.

Ryan Knutson: How big of a deal was that?

Phred Dvorak: It's a huge deal. Huge.

Ryan Knutson: It was such a big deal, that this week, President Biden announced emergency measures to try and fix it. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Wednesday, June 8th. Coming up on the show, how one little company has jammed up the entire solar industry. Manufacturers of solar panels, those shiny, inky, black rectangles, start with a modest material.

Phred Dvorak: Silicon is sand, basically. And then, you take that polysilicon, and you mold it, and you have to slice them very, very thin, into what's called wafers. And then, you take the wafers, and then you put various chemicals on them. They become cells which conduct electricity. And then, you put the frame on, and you put the glass on, and other things like that, and becomes a module or a solar panel.

Ryan Knutson: That's the process. And not much of it happens in the U.S. These days, about 90% of America's solar panels are imported from overseas. For a long time, a lot of those panels were coming from China, because the Chinese government had put a lot of resources into building up a clean energy manufacturing sector.

Phred Dvorak: The Chinese government wanted and supported solar manufacturing, and all subsidies that helped. And the industry grew a lot domestically because of that. China had a bunch of very strong, very well-capitalized, big players that had pushed prices down, and were producing at really cheap cost.

Ryan Knutson: In America, cheap solar panels were great for power utilities and for companies that install them, and for consumers who want them on their houses. And it helped reduce the emissions that cause climate change. But for U.S. solar panel manufacturers, it was a problem. They couldn't compete with those cheap prices from China. And so, in 2012, the Obama administration made a move to protect the struggling U.S. solar industry. It imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels and cells to make them more expensive.

Phred Dvorak: What tariff proponents often say, is to create a level playing field, so that U.S. companies can compete on equal terms, or near equal terms, with Chinese companies, which have a lot of other advantages.

Ryan Knutson: After those tariffs were imposed in 2012, did they work? Did it help prop up the U.S. solar panel industry?

Phred Dvorak: It helped a bit.

Ryan Knutson: But not enough, because Chinese companies adapted.

Phred Dvorak: Well, one of the things they did, was move somewhere else, so that the manufacturing wasn't located in China anymore. If you look at where imports are coming from, it's shifted very clearly from China to Southeast Asia.

Ryan Knutson: So this wasn't some sneaky secret. It was like, a Chinese company says, "Oh, I'm going to be taxed if I send these directly from China. So, okay, I'm going to open a division over here in Vietnam and then I'll send them through there, and I'll get around this extra tariff."

Phred Dvorak: Well, it's obvious that they were moving manufacturing to Southeast Asia. I don't know that anyone said, "Well, this is in order to avoid U.S. tariffs." After all, there are lots of markets in the world besides the U.S. And there are other reasons for them to go to Southeast Asia, besides avoiding U.S. tariffs. Labor costs were rising in China, and they were still pretty low in countries like Vietnam, and Cambodia, and Thailand.

Ryan Knutson: For American companies that make solar panels and compete with these Asian producers, this has been really frustrating. So, last year, a group of American solar panel manufacturers got together and filed an anonymous complaint with the U.S. Commerce Department.

Phred Dvorak: This group of manufacturers were saying, actually, tariffs that were imposed on China in 2012 should be extended to Southeast Asia, because in fact, the manufacturers in those countries were just, it was just the Chinese companies shifting their operations, in order to get around those tariffs.

Ryan Knutson: And what happened with that complaint?

Phred Dvorak: The Commerce Department decided not to investigate, because it was anonymous. None of the proponents would say who they were.

Ryan Knutson: The U.S. solar companies didn't want to use their names, because they were worried there would be blowback from China and from others in the solar industry, like the installers. But one of those companies decided not to shy away from the fight. Auxin. They went public, and filed a complaint on their own.

Phred Dvorak: Hi, it's Phred-

Phred Dvorak: ... Dvorak from The Wall Street Journal.

Mamun Rashid: Thank you. Very honored-

Ryan Knutson: Mamun Rashid co-founded Auxin in 2008. And over the years, his company has been struggling financially. Rashid told Phred that at one point, he even cashed out his 401k to help pay for equipment and meet payroll.

Mamun Rashid: They had to get the New York office of Fidelity on the line, saying, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" And I said, "I know what I'm doing. It has to happen." But I believed in it so much.

Phred Dvorak: He had to sell a car. He was into fancy cars, and he said he had his dream car, and he had to sell that in order to buy machinery. They're really, in many ways, living hand-to-mouth.

Mamun Rashid: Yeah, it's all personal cash. Friends and family have also helped out in dire times.

Ryan Knutson: Rashid felt like those tariffs were critical to the company's survival. So, he wasn't afraid to put Auxin's name on the complaint.

Phred Dvorak: Auxin thought, "Well, what's the big deal about retaliation? We'll be the face of the petition." And so, they refiled with its name on it.

Ryan Knutson: And this time, the commerce department decided to do something. At the end of March, it made an announcement.

Phred Dvorak: They were going to formally investigate the complaint or the petition, starting in April. And that really threw things into chaos.

Ryan Knutson: That's after the break. After Auxin filed its complaint publicly, the U.S. Commerce Department decided to investigate. The question was whether Chinese companies were breaking the law by routing business through other countries in Asia to evade U.S. tariffs. If they find this to be the case, it means that those cheap Southeast Asian panels could get slapped with big import tariffs, and panels coming from Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia could suddenly get a lot more expensive. Even panels that had already been sold could get hit with tariffs. And that threat had a huge chilling effect on the U.S. solar industry.

Phred Dvorak: Nobody wanted to take the risk that suddenly the panels that they were contracted for would be twice, three times, however many times as expensive as that they thought that they would be paying for. And so, suppliers balked at sending panels to the U.S., and buyers here, like solar installers, they didn't want to sign any new contracts, because they didn't know how much the panels were going to cost.

Ryan Knutson: Solar panel installations across the country ground to a halt.

Phred Dvorak: I talked to a solar installer, one of the biggest, maybe the biggest solar installer in the U.S. They said they had three projects, three big projects, that had already started construction. And they had to put those on hold and lay off everyone involved.

Ryan Knutson: Power companies are also concerned, because it's delayed their ability to transition to more solar energy.

Phred Dvorak: Some power companies were saying that they were keeping coal plants running longer than they expected, which, of course, is not good for the climate.

Ryan Knutson: And it wasn't just private companies. State and local governments also started worrying that they wouldn't be able to meet their clean energy targets. And not only that, they worried it might affect their ability to deliver power reliably. A large group of them came together and wrote letters to the president and to the commerce department.

Phred Dvorak: 19 governors, 85 representatives of the house of Congress, 22, I think it was, senators. There was massive, massive political outcry.

Ryan Knutson: How does Auxin feel about everything that's happening? I mean, is this good for them? Is this what they wanted?

Phred Dvorak: Auxin didn't want to completely disrupt the U.S. solar industry. And I think that Mamun and Auxin really didn't realize just the full impact of what they did would be. They certainly didn't appreciate the blowback that they would get.

Ryan Knutson: And the blowback has been personal.

Phred Dvorak: Mamun says that their servers were hacked, that their employees were getting hassled over social media. They had strange cars circling the factory. There were panel procurers who wouldn't buy from Auxin, because of what it had done. So, I think it's been really difficult for them.

Ryan Knutson: The solar slowdown didn't just put pressure on Auxin. It put pressure on the Biden administration. Biden has set ambitious climate goals, goals that require a lot more solar energy. And so, this week, the White House decided to step in.

Speaker 4: The Biden administration waives tariffs on solar imports for two years. Now, we're talking specifically about new tariffs for these imports that come in through four Southeast Asian countries. We're talking about Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia-

Ryan Knutson: For the next two years, solar panels can continue to be imported from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia with no new tariffs, like the ones Auxin was fighting for.

Phred Dvorak: They've essentially declared an energy and climate emergency, and said that because of the situation, needing a secure supply of energy, and clean energy, that we have to have a good supply of solar panels. And so, what they did was they said, "We're not interfering with the commerce investigation. And for two years, we're declaring a moratorium on new solar tariffs." So, that gives the solar industry some certainty of what prices will be like. That means that they're no longer worrying that they could be whopped with this massive bill.

Ryan Knutson: The Biden administration also said it would invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage more solar production in the U.S. What does Auxin think about this news?

Phred Dvorak: Auxin's not very happy. They're saying that it was interference with the Commerce investigation, and that it will let Chinese companies continue to circumvent duties, and that it's potentially wasn't legal. Yeah, they're unhappy.

Ryan Knutson: Does Mamun Rashid regret bringing this complaint and putting Auxin's name on it?

Phred Dvorak: Well, he said that it's difficult. He said there are times he feels like throwing things, and there are times that he feels angry. But he still says that he doesn't regret filing the petition, because he still thinks it was the right thing to do.

Ryan Knutson: Is there any hope that the U.S. can have a big, robust solar manufacturing industry?

Phred Dvorak: Well, I wouldn't say that there's no hope, but it would take a lot of effort and a lot of money. And it would probably be expensive, because the cheapest panels come from Asia right now. China and Southeast Asia. So, as you're trying to build up an industry here, you're going to have to pay more for that.

Ryan Knutson: If U.S. solar panel companies have fallen so far behind Asia, and if the ultimate goal is to just have more clean energy, does it even matter where solar panels come from?

Phred Dvorak: The U.S. is going to need an awful lot of clean energy, like all countries in the world. And China is the dominant force now, but with the expected growth in solar and other technologies like wind, I don't think that necessarily means that there's no place for more manufacturing in other parts of the world, especially because countries, they look at what happened during the pandemic with supply chains. They look at the war in the Ukraine, and they see that energy security is a huge, huge issue.

Ryan Knutson: Because so much of the solar supply chain is controlled by China, it also raises questions over whether the U.S. should be so reliant on a geopolitical rival for its growing green energy sector.

Phred Dvorak: If the energy of the future is going to be clean energy, there are a lot of people asking, "Doesn't it make sense to have more of that clean energy chain built domestically?" And that's an answer that I think we'll be struggling with in the next several years.

Ryan Knutson: This episode has been updated to include an introduction to the reporter on the story, Phred Dvorak. That's all for today. Wednesday, June 8th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Katherine Blunt, Josh Zumbrun, and Tim Puko. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Kate Linebaugh is the co-host of The Journal. She has worked at The Wall Street Journal for 15 years, most recently as the deputy U.S. news coverage chief. Kate started at the Journal in Hong Kong, stopping in Detroit and coming to New York in 2011. As a reporter, she covered everything from post-9/11 Afghanistan to the 2004 Asian tsunami, from Toyota's sudden acceleration recall to General Electric. She holds a bachelor degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and went back to campus in 2007 for a Knight-Wallace fellowship.

Ryan Knutson is the co-host of The Journal. Previously, he spent more than four years in the newsroom covering the wireless industry, and was responsible for a string of scoops including Verizon's $130 billion buyout of Vodafone's stake in their joint venture, Sprint and T-Mobile's never ending courtship and a hack of the 911 emergency system that spread virally on Twitter. He was also a regular author of A-heds, including one about millennials discovering TV antennas. Previously, he reported for ProPublica, PBS Frontline and OPB, the NPR affiliate station in Portland, Ore. He grew up in Beaverton, Ore. and graduated from the University of Oregon.