By Gordon Brinser

The economic toll of illegal Chinese trade tactics against the U.S. domestic solar manufacturing industry is disastrous:

Over the past 18 months, 800 jobs lost in Massachusetts, 117 in New York, 328 in Maryland, 266 in California, and hundreds more in three other states. Then there's the subcontractor level.

These high-paying jobs have evaporated from a blossoming U.S. industry that has global aspirations -- aspirations that China is gutting. And that has major negative implications for hiring and exports, two areas that the Obama administration is hoping to improve.

It's one thing to compete head to head in a free and open marketplace where products are judged based on quality and fair pricing. It's quite another to be undercut by illegal government tactics in the form of huge subsidies and trade dumping.

Solar power holds tremendous promise as an energy source to help meet future needs, and American labor and ingenuity have been at the heart of its development. After all, modern solar panels were invented in the U.S. in the 1950s.

Today, solar power is gaining in popularity as a clean, cost-effective alternative energy source, and American solar manufacturers are poised to meet the growing demand.

But China has other plans.

China's central government has its sights set on taking over the U.S. solar industry; the country's actions in support of its own manufacturers prove it. China's solar industry is receiving huge illegal subsidies, exporting virtually all of its production and dumping it at artificially low prices into the U.S. market.

This illegal Chinese activity has been a primary cause for a 40 percent collapse in prices during the past year. Some claim China has a production cost advantage that allows its state-sponsored manufacturers to sell at reduced prices, but that is simply not true.

China's solar companies have no advantage over U.S. manufacturers in terms of available raw materials or production equipment, and differences in labor rates are muted because labor's share of production costs is small. Additionally, Chinese products face higher shipping costs than products made domestically.

China's pricing on solar exports is impossible to achieve without the help of illegal subsidies that drive exports into foreign markets. From 2008 to 2010, China's exports of solar cells and panels into the U.S. jumped more than 350 percent. This past July alone, China's exports exceeded those from all of 2010.

The result has been calamitous for U.S. solar companies and workers, forcing seven American plants to close or downsize during the past 18 months.

Unless China's illegal activities are stopped, it will essentially gain a monopoly over the market, and U.S. production of what started as an American innovation will largely end. Then Americans will have no choice but to buy solar products labeled "Made in China" at prices the Chinese government can set arbitrarily to recoup its investments.

To prevent this outcome, my company, SolarWorld Industries America Inc., in conjunction with seven other solar companies, filed complaints against China with the U.S. government last month.

The investigation should be completed in about a year. If the U.S. government finds in favor of our complaints, it will impose tariffs on Chinese manufacturers to eliminate their existing unfair advantage.

The Chinese government and its U.S. allies have responded to the coalition's complaints by accusing U.S. solar manufacturers of being "protectionist." This is absurd. The U.S. solar market and its comparatively modest subsidies are open to all foreign manufacturers, while China restricts foreign companies from accessing its incentives or even competing in its marketplace.

Furthermore, China claims that cheap solar panels will stop global warming, but it has no problem with fouling the planet to produce them. China's environmental abuse at the hands of its solar industry is well-documented, most recently in a September article by The New York Times that reported on a plant owned by JinkoSolar, one of the defendants in our complaint, which was closed for dumping its waste into a local river.

Finally, there's nothing protectionist about defending an industry from elimination when the other side is cheating to undermine its competition. In the end, only healthy competition will lead to sustainable trends that increase efficiency and innovation while decreasing prices. Monopolization pushes in the other direction.

China is pursuing a win-at-any-cost policy with regard to the U.S. solar industry, and it is violating international trade law in the process.

America's solar manufacturers can compete with any foreign country at any time, but that competition must respect the rules. And the U.S. government must enforce the rules.

Otherwise, the tally of job losses will continue to grow at a time when the country can least afford the economic toll.

Gordon Brinser is president of SolarWorld Industries America Inc., headquartered in Hillsboro.