US targets China's solar dominance with 50% tariffs on solar wafers and polysilicon — tungsten products will see a 25% increase

Both are happening at the same time. A new plant for domestic wafer production is coming online in parallel to this.

build up US companies to make solar panels.

One would expect it to have that effect. If X is more expensive to obtain abroad, then you'll tend to have more domestic capacity being developed -- as long as it's believed that the tariffs aren't going to go away in the near future, since otherwise, anyone investing in solar manufacturing capacity stands to lose their investment.

They are, see this comment: https://sopuli.xyz/post/20118076/13518676

I'm convinced it will be easy to sell solar to the Right once it is marketed as 'off-grid independent self-sufficient energy' instead of 'green energy'.

They are. See this comment: https://sopuli.xyz/post/20118076/13518676

Been reading about this, sucks, but makes sense.

China is subsidizing production, using heavily polluting plants, and crashing costs to steal the market. It's a mafia tactic. Once they fill the market, they'll jack prices up. The Trump administration excluded bifacial panel tariffs which turned out to be a huge problem since they became the default. Then Biden waived duties for 2 years which compounded it.

While investments are being made domestically, the administration has tried more but installers just want them cheap, and it's too late for the US to copy China. So now there are huge tax benefits from the Biden administration, but they need to get people to switch over to using them.

Now the only way to make that happen appears to be to raise the prices up before Chiba gets the opportunity to saturate the market and do the same. The hope is this will get people to leverage the tax benefits to get the same prices domestically. Hopefully it's not too late.

It's actually a pretty interesting geopolicial whirlwind.