Ohio's two Republican senators, Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, are pressing the Department of Homeland Security to force Chinese solar companies to repay import duties they avoided under a Biden-era tariff pause that has since been ruled unlawful. The demand matters because it seeks to recover what the senators describe as billions of dollars owed to the US Treasury, and it frames the issue as part of a wider concern about Chinese state-subsidised dominance of the global solar market and its implications for American energy security and domestic manufacturing.

In 2022, the Biden administration temporarily paused tariffs on solar panels originating in four Southeast Asian countries — Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam — many of which contained components made by Chinese firms. In August 2025, the US Court of International Trade found that the legal basis used to impose the pause could not be applied to solar panels, rendering it unlawful. In a letter sent to DHS in May, Husted and Moreno argued the moratorium was a "unilateral tariff giveaway" that let Chinese manufacturers route products through third countries to circumvent anti-dumping duties, and Husted claimed China aims to flood the market, drive competitors out of business and make other nations reliant on it for energy. Husted was appointed to the Senate in 2025 to replace now Vice-President JD Vance.