Kerry: US weighs sanctions on China solar over forced labor

The Biden administration is considering sanctions over China’s alleged use of forced labor in production of solar panels and other components in renewable energy, climate envoy John Kerry told lawmakers Wednesday.

Kerry’s comments at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing sought to defuse one of the main arguments that congressional Republicans have cited against President Joe Biden’s push for a climate-friendly makeover of the U.S. economy: China's manufacturing dominance risks implicating buyers of Chinese-made solar panels, batteries and other green-energy tech in that country’s human rights abuses.

Much of the world’s polysilicon, used in photovoltaic cells for solar panels, comes through China’s Xinjiang province, where China is waging a sustained campaign against Chinese Muslims and ethnic minorities. That includes detention of more than 1 million people, who rights groups, news organizations and governments say are forced into labor in factories and other workplaces. China's foreign ministry last month called the accusations "lies and false information concocted by anti-China forces.”

Republicans have cited those human rights concerns about Chinese-made renewable-energy components, and China’s status as the world’s largest emitter of climate-wrecking fossil fuel pollution, in countering Democratic calls to step up U.S. solar and wind production and wind down coal and petroleum use.

“How can you assure us that … slave labor coming out of China, where genocide is taking place as we speak, are never a part of the climate solution in the United States?” asked Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee.

Kerry told McCaul he was “absolutely correct” to raise the concern.

“It is a problem,” Kerry said. He cited “solar panels that we...