AIBRIEF
A late August executive order bars Chinese made equipment from US grid storage, on top of a 25% battery tariff and a 2026 tax credit rule that together redraw the cost math of the storage boom.
A Trump-administration executive order in late August declared a national emergency and barred Chinese-made bulk-power equipment from US grid-scale energy storage, the large batteries for the power grid that smooth intermittent renewable power and back up reliability. The order names battery energy storage systems alongside inverters and transformers as national-security risks (MIT Technology Review explains).
That ban is the top layer of a three-beat policy stack. In January, import taxes on batteries jumped from 7.5% to 25%. Starting in 2026, new grid-storage projects will lose federal tax credits unless at least 55% of their material cost comes from outside China and other restricted countries. The credits themselves were originally written into the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to restrict where minerals are mined, processed, and recycled, and were reshaped again in 2025.
Cheap imported cells are the reason the US storage boom is real, with deployments now shoring up reliability and cutting emissions by storing renewable power. A ban forces the buildout of higher-cost domestic capacity, and the policy is now built against the same cheap supply that built the boom.
The 2026 tax-credit rule is already on the clock. The open question is whether domestic and allied suppliers can scale to that 55% threshold fast enough to keep the storage buildout moving at its current pace.