Editorial: Don’t let protectionism kill Moses Lake jobs

Beyond the big-picture talk last week in Seattle about leveling the playing field for international investors in China, there’s the little-picture predicament of 400 Moses Lake workers trapped in a trade dispute between the United States and China.

REC Silicon produces polysilicon, most of it used in the production of solar panels. In 2008, the Norway-based company invested more than $1 billion in its Moses Lake plant, doubling its output as world demand for the material soared, and with it prices.

About 80 percent of the polysilicon made in Moses Lake was shipped to China, where the industry was in the middle of a spectacular expansion that briefly made the owner of one solar manufacturer the richest man in the Middle Kingdom.

Very briefly.

Chinese production soared way beyond global demand, and claims its manufacturers were dumping surplus panels in the U.S. triggered the imposition of stiff tariffs. The Chinese responded with equally punitive tariffs on polysilicon imports.

U.S. trade officials and Washington state leaders have worked for two years to resolve the fight and may finally be nearing a resolution that would stave off the Moses Lake layoffs.

The deal would reportedly reopen the U.S. market to China-made panels, and polysilicon producers such as REC could again sell to Chinese companies that would no longer have to pay the import tariff. A satisfactory conclusion depends in part on a package of incentives for U.S. panel makers that will assure they remain competitive should imports be renewed.

A solution cannot come too soon for REC employees or Moses Lake, which has established an international profile by attracting energy-intensive industries like polysilicon manufacturing that thrive on cheap hydropower available from the Grant County Public Utility District.

The plant’s production technology is also significantly more efficient than that used in most other facilities.

But protectionism is a powerful force, too.

Gov. Jay Inslee has written letters to the White House and China’s Ministry of Trade appealing for a solution. He also raised the REC issue with President Xi Jinping during the Chinese leader’s West Side stop on the way to meetings with President Barack Obama and the United Nations General Assembly session.

Despite plunging oil and natural gas prices, solar power continues to become more competitive as technology brings the cost of a kilowatt-hour down. Even oil exporters in the Middle East are installing huge solar farms.

With all of the concern about stranding U.S. investment in China, attention should be paid the potential stranding of a $1 billion investment in Moses Lake and the destruction of jobs that would go with a shutdown.