Chinese investors eyeing the US market have faced an increasingly hostile reception in recent years — but one sector of the country’s business community has quietly made a success of its American ventures: solar.
Amid a boom in US cleantech manufacturing, solar plants backed by Chinese investors have sprung up from Texas to Ohio — and to minimal fanfare.
But the growth prospects for Chinese solar in the US are suddenly looking dimmer. Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January looks set to bring a crackdown on inward investment from Beijing and a bipartisan political push to exclude Chinese-owned plants from generous clean energy subsidies.