FIRST ON FOX: Ohio’s two Republican senators say that Chinese companies avoided paying billions of dollars in taxes through a Biden-era tariff pause that has since been declared unlawful.
Now, they’re demanding that the Department of Homeland Security send the bill to China.
In 2022, the Biden administration issued a temporary pause on tariffs for solar panels originating in Southeast Asia, many of which contained components manufactured by Chinese corporations. The United States Court of International Trade, in August 2025, found the law used by the Biden administration to initiate the pause could not be applied to solar panels, thus making it unlawful.
“China has a strategy. They have state-subsidized business sectors, solar panels being one of them, in which they want to flood the global market, put everyone out of business, and then you’re completely reliant on China for generation of energy that is connected to your electric grid, which can create instability around the globe,” Sen. Jon Husted told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday. “They want dominance. They want to weaken America. They want to weaken the rest of the world by subsidizing these solar companies.”
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Husted and fellow Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, in a letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security in May, argue that Chinese solar companies should be forced to pay back the import duties they avoided under the Biden administration’s now-vacated tariff pause.
“This moratorium served as a unilateral tariff giveaway that benefited Chinese solar manufacturers operating through third-country routes to circumvent existing anti-dumping duty orders and rip the American economy out of billions of dollars,” the senators wrote. “The total unpaid duties represent billions of dollars owed to the U.S. Treasury — the vast majority by Chinese state-backed companies that exploited the moratorium to flood the U.S. market with artificially cheap solar products.”
“These products are not only second rate but pose a risk to our nation’s national security and domestic manufacturing capabilities,” they added.
The four countries covered by the tariff pause, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, are home to Chinese solar manufacturers that have been accused of attempting to get around U.S. trade laws. They represented 84% of solar panel imports to the United States in late 2023.
Husted told Fox News Digital in a video interview Tuesday that he believes Chinese companies owe the United States $67 billion in tariff payments stemming from the voided moratorium.
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Chinese solar manufacturing has long been a flashpoint for controversy.
China hawks, for instance, contend that importing too many Chinese solar panels could make the American energy grid dependent on Chinese manufacturing, giving Beijing leverage over the United States. On the other side of the spectrum, human rights activists have criticized the Chinese solar industry over its alleged ties to forced Uyghur labor.
The Biden administration initiated the tariff pause in 2022 because it feared an ongoing federal investigation into whether China-linked solar products were circumventing U.S. antidumping laws by routing products through Southeast Asia would freeze the solar supply chain, delay clean-energy projects and worsen electricity-reliability risks.
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Husted and Moreno claimed that Customs and Border Protection, which operates under DHS, conducted an internal review that found that “not a single entry admitted under the moratorium legitimately qualified for relief.”
Their letter claims that CBP has “statutory authority” to “issue retroactive bills of duty plus interest.”
“Look, the Department of Homeland Security has identified that this was an illegal move to avoid the tariffs that these Chinese state-backed companies owe,” Husted told Fox News Digital. “So we definitely have enforcement mechanisms to do that. I believe we solidly have the ability at the Department of Homeland Security to enforce the law, to hold these companies accountable and to make them pay the tariffs that are due.”
A DHS spokesperson confirmed that the agency had received the senator’s letters but declined to comment on whether it would follow through with their recommendations.
“We appreciate Senators Husted and Moreno and their determination to shed light on the Biden Administration’s solar tariff moratorium,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “We look forward to working with the senators on this crucial issue. DHS responds to official correspondence through official channels.”
The duo of senators is requesting that CBP publicly release its internal review, that it issue retroactive bills to the companies that benefited from the tariff pause and that the agency publicly release how much each importer owes.
“Enforcing these obligations is a matter of fairness, rule of law, and the credibility of U.S. trade enforcement,” the letter reads. “One thing should be made clear – The United States will enforce trade laws and counter CCP efforts to flood our markets with cheap products that were supported by the Biden Administration’s Green New Scam agenda.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Biden’s office for additional comment Tuesday.
