What if US and EU tariffs triple solar panel costs?
Tripling Chinese module costs via US/EU tariffs is a trade-war shock; the cleanest leg is CNY weaker and China megacaps (BABA) lower as Beijing bears the brunt, with the broad Nasdaq hit overstated for a narrow solar measure. Direct rhyme is the April-2025 Liberation-Day/100%+ tariff peak that sank the yuan and China tech. Transmission: China supplies ~80% of modules, so US installers eat the cost. Forward angle: domestic/SE-Asia capacity now cushions more than in 2018.
Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 6–18 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Sweeping US and EU tariffs on Chinese solar modules triple panel costs and halt utility-scale buildouts. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Trade tension ▲ · Industrial demand ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.