JERUSALEM — Vice President Mike Pence reiterated to Israeli leaders on Tuesday that the Trump administration plans to pull out of the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal unless the pact is amended.
The remarks came as Pence wrapped up his visit to Israel. On Monday, he repeatedly referred to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also used a high-profile speech to the parliament to announce plans to speed up the timing of the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem — moving it from Tel Aviv — by the end of 2019.
On Tuesday, Pence met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and vowed the United States would counter the Iranian nuclear threat. He then headed to the most emotional part of his visit — a tribute to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and a visit to the Western Wall. He was to depart the Holy Land later in the day.
Rivlin praised Pence’s speech to parliament and his role in pushing for the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“You are a mensch,” Rivlin told a smiling Pence.
Pence also repeated the administration’s plan to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which has been vociferously opposed by Israel, unless the pact is enforced and amended. He noted U.S. efforts to gain support from European allies to address what he described as flawed parts of the agreement, adding that President Donald Trump “has made clear” the U.S. will leave the nuclear deal if that doesn’t happen.
“We are sending a signal to our European allies that the time has come for changes in the Iran nuclear deal,” Pence said, sitting alongside Rivlin. “Punitive sanctions will be available for many years to come to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and you have our commitment to work closely with our allies around the world to achieve that.”
Pence’s trip to the Middle East also included stops in Egypt and Jordan.
Pence aides said the vice president would be making “a personal visit,” in the same manner in which Trump prayed at the Western Wall during his visit to Israel last year. But in late 2017, Trump officials said that while the ultimate borders of the holy city must be resolved through negotiations, they could not “envision any situation under which the Western Wall would not be part of Israel.”
During Pence’s speech to Knesset on Monday, several Arab lawmakers shouted and raised signs that said, “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine” before they were forcibly removed from the plenum.
Palestinian leaders have assailed the Jerusalem move and refused to meet with Pence. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas snubbed the vice president by overlapping with Pence in Jordan during the weekend but not meeting with him.
The Palestinians have pre-emptively rejected any peace proposal floated by the Trump administration amid concerns it would fall far below their hopes for an independent state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, lands captured by Israel in the 1967 war.
Abbas’ ruling Fatah party called for a general strike on Tuesday to protest Pence’s visit and Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem. The strike is meant to include shops, public transportation, banks and most of the public sector aside from schools and hospitals.
Fatah official Jamal Muheisen told the Voice of Palestine that the strike marks “the beginning of our popular peaceful struggle” against the Jerusalem move.
Jerusalem’s status has been a central issue in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump’s announcement in December declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital has created reverberations through the region and countered decades of U.S. foreign policy and international consensus that Jerusalem’s status should be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Pence again argued that the president’s decision would help move the peace process along.
“President Trump truly believes that the decision the United States has made to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, we believe, will set the table for the opportunity to move forward in meaningful negotiations to achieve a lasting peace,” he said.
Rivlin responded in an Arabic expression, “Inshallah,” adding that it meant “with God’s help.”
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The first time the United States tried to protect solar industry manufacturing jobs from foreign competition, things did not go exactly as planned.
Chinese solar panel makers evaded U.S. tariffs by relocating to Taiwan, and the Chinese government retaliated with its own duties on U.S. exports of the raw material used in making the panels — leading American manufacturers to lay off more than 1,000 workers and scrap a new $1.2 billion factory.
Now, the United States is trying again. President Trump on Monday imposed a new round of tariffs on imported solar panels in response to fresh pleas from two bankrupt manufacturers, Suniva and SolarWorld. The companies — U.S.-based but foreign-owned — complain that Chinese rivals, backed by generous state subsidies, have flooded the U.S. market with solar panels at prices they can’t match.
For the president, the solar decision, and a similar move against imported washing machines, represent a big step toward fulfilling his campaign promises to get tough on trading partners like China. Additional decisions loom on trade secrets, steel and aluminum, raising the prospect of a more confrontational trade stance that might cheer Trump’s supporters in the industrial heartland while unnerving investors and multinational corporations.
The polysilicon industryserves as a cautionary tale of what can happen when trade officials take actions designed to protect workers in one corner of the economy only to see them boomerang elsewhere.
Production operator John White checks a panel at the SolarWorld solar panel factory in Hillsboro, Ore. (Natalie Behring/Reuters)
“There’s always a risk of tit-for-tat retaliation, particularly with China. . . . It’s a warning shot: Don’t do this too often,” says economist Douglas Irwin, author of “Clashing Over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy.”
Three global firms — Wacker, REC Silicon and Hemlock Semiconductor — account for the vast majority of U.S. polysilicon production. The material is used to produce semiconductors for computers as well as the solar components that turn sunlight into electricity.
The Tennessee factory that Hemlock leveled in 2015 before it had produced anything was not the only collateral damage from the initial U.S. trade action. REC Silicon took refuge in a joint venture with a state-owned Chinese company, gaining a foothold in China but surrendering access to its proprietary technology in the bargain.
Polysilicon executives fear that the president’s action will leave in place the Chinese trade barriers, which imperil their existing U.S. operations.
Industry representatives in recent weeks met with officials such as Robert E. Lighthizer, the president’s chief trade negotiator, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to plead for an alternative that would resolve all solar-related disputes between the United States and China.
Polysilicon producers say that the United States should negotiate a comprehensive settlement with China to resolve both the old and new solar issues. Such a deal could divide the estimated $1.5 billion in customs duties that importers paid in the original trade case among the panel makers, polysilicon producers and rebates importers.
Trump’s tariffs could pave the way for such a negotiated bargain. Lighthizer’s formal tariff announcement promised to open “discussions among interested parties” toward that goal.
Still, the idea remains a long shot. The European Union resolved a similar spat with China through talks, but Obama administration efforts to settle its solar differences with Beijing at the negotiating table stalled.
Most analysts say that Trump has long been fixated on imposing tariffs as a demonstration of the muscular new course in trade policy that he is charting.
“Politicians like to say they’re going to bat for a particular group of people and like to look tough,” said Daniel Ikenson, trade policy analyst at the nonpartisan Cato Institute. “What’s harder to see is there are costs . . . and they are real.”
It may be too late to prevent further erosion in the U.S. polysilicon industry, given the dramatic expansion in Chinese production since the tariff war erupted. In 2010, the United States topped China 62,000 tons to 55,000 tons, according to Ethan Zindler, head of Americas for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. But by 2016, after a flurry of new plant construction, China produced 208,250 tons, nearly triple total U.S. production.
“There was a moment when the U.S. was the global leader. But China just basically blew by them,” Zindler said. “If tariffs disappeared immediately, they would still have trouble finding customers in China.”
The Chinese tariffs effectively barred U.S. suppliers from a market that accounts for 80 percent of global sales. U.S. exports of polysilicon to China plunged to less than $200 million in 2016, the most recent year available, from more than $1 billion before the tariffs were imposed, even as overall Chinese demand more than doubled.
Hemlock laid off roughly 500 workers in Michigan and Tennessee, including 100 who will leave the payroll this quarter. REC Silicon dropped 450 workers in Washington state, cut production capacity in half and mothballed a new $150 million facility.
“We’re probably the victim that’s been hit the hardest in this trade war,” said Francine Sullivan, vice president for business development at REC Silicon.
If the Chinese tariffs remain in place, further layoffs are likely, industry officials have warned.
Wacker Polysilicon North America produces polysilicon at a $2.5 billion polysilicon plant in Charleston, Tenn., that was designed as an answer to China’s surging needs, a company executive told a U.S. Trade Representative Office hearing last month. The “health” of the facility and prospects for future expansion depend upon lifting the Chinese tariffs, said Mary Beth Hudson, the Charleston site manager.
Polysilicon factories are mammoth, multibillion-dollar facilities that in scale and appearance resemble oil refineries. Inside, workers use a chemical process to convert silane gas or quartz into polysilicon. Industry jobs pay well, with total compensation often exceeding $100,000, executives say.
The dispute that reached Trump’s desk saw panel makers Suniva and SolarWorld, two bankrupt foreign-owned manufacturers, face off against a growing U.S. workforce of solar installers, engineers, project managers and sales executives.
The International Trade Commission concluded that rising imports are hurting the domestic industry and recommended to the president potential remedies including quotas and tariffs of up to 35 percent. Tariff opponents say that more than one-third of industry’s 260,000 jobs are at risk of disappearing following the president’s action to discourage imports.
Suniva petitioned the government for protection in April, taking advantage of a clause in U.S. trade law that allows the president to impose sweeping global tariffs without any evidence that foreign trading partners acted unfairly. SolarWorld joined the fight for such “safeguard” measures one month later.
“More than 30 U.S. companies have been forced out of business. A strong remedy will revive and strengthen U.S. manufacturing,” Timothy Brightbill, an attorney who represents SolarWorld, said before the decision.
When the United States has imposed such safeguard measures in the past, its trading partners have inevitably complained to the World Trade Organization. And the multilateral trading body’s dispute settlement board has repeatedly found the specific U.S. actions in violation of Washington’s international commitments.
No U.S. industry has sought safeguard protection since 2001, when the steel industry appealed for help to the Bush White House. President George W. Bush imposed tariffs of up to 30 percent, drawing applause from domestic manufacturers but leading to steep job losses at companies that used steel.
Estimates of the jobs lost ranged from 26,000 to 200,000, dwarfing the steel jobs temporarily saved. Bush lifted the tariffs in 2003 after the WTO authorized the European Union to retaliate for the improper duties with more than $2 billion in levies on U.S. imports.
