JinkoSolar sells 75% majority stake in US manufacturing business

FH Capital said it would deploy additional capital to “at least double” the facility’s solar module production capacity and begin US battery energy storage system (BESS) manufacturing. The company owns assets in the energy and industrial sectors, including investments in South Carolina solar cell manufacturer ES Foundry.

Nigel Cockroft, US general manager of JinkoSolar, said: “We believe this transaction provides the right ownership, management and strategic direction for this new venture to grow capacity and serve the growing demand for high-performance US-sourced renewable energy products.”

The ownership change comes amid increased scrutiny on the influence of Chinese companies and products in the US solar industry. The Trump administration introduced new Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions in its 2025 budget bill, which limit the amount of Chinese ownership, influence or funding a solar manufacturing facility or power generation project can have and still receive federal tax support.  

Combined with requirements around using domestic content and a thicket of AD/CVD and other tariffs on Chinese-owned solar imports and others from various parts of the world, the US has become even less hospitable for foreign-owned solar manufacturing.

Other Chinese companies have reduced or entirely sold their US manufacturing assets. Trina Solar sold a majority stake in its module manufacturing facility in December 2024 to T1 Energy (formerly Freyr Battery) and JA Solar sold its 2GW US module assembly plant to Corning.

Questions remain over whether the US’ restrictive approach to Chinese products and companies will benefit its solar manufacturing industry, which grew massively in the last few years to reach roughly 50GW of nameplate annual module production capacity.

Some of the biggest US players – led by cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film module producer First Solar and Korean-owned Hanwha Qcells – have made the case for greater trade enforcement and tariffs to support US solar manufacturers. Their legal representative, Tim Brightbill, said in March that downstream legislative changes to the solar industry “make robust trade enforcement more urgent than ever”.

However, industry analysts have warned that harsh protectionist measures like the ongoing Section 232 investigation into polysilicon imports could “choke the entire US solar market”. Additionally, the gap between module manufacturing capacity and the availability of domestic upstream components like cells and wafers could significantly hamper the cost-competitiveness that tariffs are meant to give to US companies. Aaron Hall, head of the renewables data platform Anza, told PV Tech Premium last month that the lack of domestic US wafer supply could drive “pricing pressure” for US-made products and cause a “fundamental bottleneck” in supply.