Credit clean-energy skeptic Donald Trump with rescuing a Hillsboro solar energy factory.

SolarWorld sold its facility Wednesday to a California rival, SunPower, which said it made the deal to get around tariffs the president imposed this winter on imported solar panels.

"The catalyst for this was the solar tariffs and the direction the current administration was going in terms of domestic solar manufacturing," SunPower chief executive Tom Werner said in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Though based in California, SunPower makes its solar panels in the Philippines and Malaysia, and it had lobbied against new tariffs SolarWorld sought on imported solar products. With Wednesday's deal, SunPower now has a domestic manufacturing source that won't be subject to those tariffs.

SunPower will move some of its advanced production to Hillsboro, which will make production there more competitive, he said. And legacy production will continue, too, he said.

SolarWorld laid off 360 Hillsboro employees last summer after its parent company in Germany declared itself insolvent. The future of 350 remaining jobs had been uncertain while SolarWorld marketed itself to prospective buyers.

Wednesday's deal appears to rescue those workers and create the possibility of significant expansion.

"It's operating at roughly a 50 percent capacity, so the upside is obvious," Werner said. "Time will tell."

SolarWorld and SunPower did not report terms of Wednesday's deal. SunPower reported $1.8 billion in revenue last year, down from $2.6 billion the year before, and a loss of $1.1 billion. It is a subsidiary of French energy giant Total S.A.

SunPower shares jumped 11.8 percent Wednesday, joining other solar stocks in a sharp climb based on market expectations of increased solar demand from China and an improved pricing environment.

SolarWorld had recently filed comments with U.S. trade regulators suggesting SunPower should be exempt from the tariffs. That reflected SunPower's status as an American company, Werner said, and the pending deal for the Hillsboro site.

"They clearly knew this was in the works," he said.

Energy industry analyst Ben Kallo, who follows SunPower for the investment firm Baird, said it's still uncertain that the company will get that exemption. So he said it makes sense for SunPower to begin domestic manufacturing, though he said it's not clear that the company can make U.S. production profitable.

"The acquisition gives SPWR a toe-hold in the United States and could hedge against the risk the company does not receive an exemption from tariffs," Kallo wrote in a note to clients.

SolarWorld spent $440 million to overhaul its 480,000-square-foot Hillsboro factory, built in the 1990s by Japanese electronics manufacturer Komatsu. Komatsu was hit by an industry downturn during construction, though, and never opened the factory. It sat idle for years.

Oregon offered SolarWorld tax credits and property tax breaks worth roughly $100 million and made the company a centerpiece of a short-lived strategy to turn the state into a hub for clean technology.

And while clean energy boomed in the decade since SolarWorld opened in 2008, the company struggled amid a continued decline in domestic manufacturing and falling solar prices, driven down by a flood of imports.

Trump has derided the widely accepted science underpinning climate change. He imposed the tariffs in January at the behest of SolarWorld and another bankrupt American solar manufacturer, both of which argued that Chinese manufacturers were undercutting U.S. producers by dumping solar panels on the domestic market.

While Trump's solar tariffs alarmed some in the environmental community, others, including former Vice President Al Gore, defended the decision. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, had long advocated for tariffs to protect domestic solar manufacturers.

Wyden tweeted Wednesday that he had a brief conversation with SolarWorld about the sale. He wrote, "I'm cautiously hopeful this sale will be good news for Hillsboro and all of Washington County."

SolarWorld lobbied heavily for the new tariffs, arguing that Chinese manufacturers had demolished its business by dumping low-priced solar panels on the American market. Solar installers lobbied against them, warning that tariffs would raise the cost of solar panels and cost the industry thousands of installation jobs.

The tariffs announced in January start at 30 percent in the first year, well below the 50 percent level SolarWorld and another bankrupt American manufacturer had sought. But they were apparently enough to fuel SunPower's interest in domestic production and salvage hundreds of Hillsboro factory jobs.

"We're thrilled," said SolarWorld spokesman Ben Santarris.

-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; 503-294-7699