The energy storage market will be the latest product affected by the Trump trade war, as lithium-ion batteries are excluded from China's import product group, and the US President announced that tariffs will be postponed until December 15.

Trump may have excluded some consumer electronics from his Chinese import tariffs, but lithium-ion batteries do not have such preferential treatment.

Solar cell. Solar panels. Inverter. Steel. Aluminum frame for solar panels. Almost no part of the solar supply chain is unaffected by the Trump government's tariffs on global products... mainly in China.

You can now add batteries to the list. Lithium-ion batteries, to be exact. The HTSUS 8507.60 code was included in the list of Chinese products published yesterday, which will levy a 10% tariff on the final rounds of 301 tariffs imposed by President Trump.

Clarify that the announcement containing lithium-ion batteries exempted other products on the basis of "health, safety, national security and other factors" and delayed tariffs on Group III until December 15.

China's battery manufacturing industry has cast a long shadow over the rest of the world. Last year, China had two-thirds of the world's manufacturing capacity for energy storage lithium ion products in electric vehicles and the power industry.

In June, Kelis Bakers-Buckman, CEO of the Energy Storage Association (ESA), issued a statement warning that tariffs on Chinese batteries would have a "direct and adverse" impact on energy storage deployment:

The proposed tariffs would hamper growth and job creation, as energy storage projects already contracted were postponed or cancelled. With this in mind, while demand for improved resilience and clean energy is rising nationwide, higher costs and uncertainties will become obstacles.

Similar batteries used in electric vehicles may also have an impact on the electric vehicle market.

American manufacturers are not immune

In theory, tariffs should give Tesla and other U.S. battery manufacturers a competitive advantage. However, ESA pointed out that in the last round of Article 301, tariffs have been imposed on imports of lithium, cobalt and graphite, which constitute the main raw materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Because China supplies most of the world's chemical lithium and cobalt - and all spherical graphite production - these tariffs have undoubtedly affected Gigafactory in Nevada, Tesla, and a few other American battery manufacturers, including factories like Akasol, which are planned to be near Detroit.