WASHINGTON:   The Trump administration announced Monday that it will impose hefty tariffs on the cheap, imported panels that have driven the rapid expansion of solar power in the United States, a move that industry groups warn will slow the spread of renewable energy and cost thousands of jobs.

The tariffs come as Trump has vowed to take a tough line against cheap foreign imports that are undercutting American manufacturing industries.

The administration also announced it would impose hefty tariffs on imported large residential washing machines. In both cases, inexpensive imports, mostly from China in the case of the solar panels, have undercut U.S. manufacturers, administration officials said.

Imports from China have been a particular target of Trump’s rhetoric. The tariffs are the most concrete step that he has yet taken to put those words into action.

Trump acted after the government’s International Trade Commission “found that US producers had been seriously injured by imports,” said US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. “The president’s action makes clear again that the Trump administration will always defend American workers, farmers, ranchers and businesses.”

But the move also threatens some of the very types of jobs that Trump has vowed to protect. Companies that install solar panels will be faced with the prospect of having to trim their workforces, as the tariff — which starts at 30 percent on the imported panels and gradually declines each year — threatens to substantially raise the price of solar power in the United States.

The levies, said Abigail Ross Hopper, CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, “will create a crisis in a part of our economy that has been thriving, which will ultimately cost tens of thousands of hard-working, blue-collar Americans their jobs.”

California, where the renewables industry has taken off, will be among the states hardest hit by the new levies.

The industry trade group estimates the tariffs on solar panels will cost 23,000 jobs nationwide within the year, and that billions of dollars in potential investment in solar power will evaporate because of them.

The case for tariffs was filed at the International Trade Commission by two American firms which say their businesses have been crushed by cheap imports from Asia, which by now account for more than 90 percent of the solar panels installed in the US. The trade commission ruled that unfair competition from China had ravaged the American solar-panel manufacturing industry.

But many solar industry companies warned the move will hurt Americans at a time when growth in the American solar industry mostly does not involve the manufacturing of panels.

Meanwhile, Earlier last year, initial coin offerings (ICOs) were hailed as the IPO of the future for cash-strapped startups by allowing them to create cryptocurrencies and sell them to interested buyers around the world to crowdsource funds.

But a new report suggests not all funds that go in the crypto-coffer go straight to the startups themselves. Of the $3.7 billion raised in total through ICOs, more than 10 percent was stolen by hackers, according to accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY).

The report, which analyzed 372 ICOs, found most of the ICOs came from the United States, China and Russia. EY also found that the ICO craze — which drew celebrities such as DJ Khaled and Paris Hilton last summer to launch their own — has been dwindling in the past few months.

ICOs work by selling custom-made cryptocurrency — or “tokens” — at a discount to prospectors, who are betting that the tokens’ value will appreciate and make them a profit. But unlike an initial public offering in the stock market, the buyers are not getting a share of the company when buying the tokens.

Whereas 93 percent of ICOs in June 2017 met their fundraising goals, only 23 percent met theirs in November.

Paul Brody, EY’s global innovation leader for blockchain technology, told Reuters that a major reason ICOs have dropped in scale is because the quality of many ICOs have considerably dipped. Nearly all companies starting an ICO publish a “white paper” detailing their business plan, but Brody noted that many contained basic technical errors and contradictions.

“We were shocked by the quality of some of the white papers,” said Brody. “We see clear coding errors and we see conflicts of interest between the companies issuing tokens and the community of token holders.”

The EY report noted one factor in why investors bought so much cryptocurrency during ICOs were driven by the “fear of missing out,” or FOMO.

“Current token valuation is more like a gold valuation or a fashion item in high season when a limited supply cannot meet high demand,” says the report.

Due to the speed and size of ICOs, which sometimes can raise millions of dollars in a matter of seconds, hackers are attracted to poaching from ICOs, says Ernst & Young. Hackers use a variety of methods to get the ICO-raised money, which includes targeting private virtual wallets or exchanges, or a DDoS attack that overwhelms the ICO’s servers.

But the most popular method has been an email phishing attack because of its simplicity and efficiency, according to Ernst & Young. At least $1.5 million of ICO funds per month are stolen through phishing attacks.

Due to the anonymous nature of ICOs and the irreversibility of cryptocurrency transactions, hackers are emboldened to target cryptocurrency exchanges where ICOs take place.

The frequency of the attacks are increasing on the exchanges, and cryptocurrency exchanges average $2 billion in hacking losses, according to a separate Ernst & Young report from November.

Governments around the world are beginning to crack down on ICOs. China and South Korea outright banned ICOs last September. In the United States, the Securities and Exchanges Commission has remained wary of ICOs — but has not banned or added regulations.

In November, the SEC warned publicly about celebrity-backed ICOs, saying the celebrities need to disclose their compensation for advertising their ICO on social media.

“These endorsements may be unlawful if they do not disclose the nature, source, and amount of any compensation paid, directly or indirectly, by the company in exchange for the endorsement,” said the SEC.