It’s not just American solar manufacturers that are struggling because the Chinese have allegedly been illegally undercutting costs for parts.

Manufacturers of wind turbine components are also being undercut by Chinese price wars. 

But that’s just the beginning of the worries facing U.S. wind manufacturers, as the The New York Times reports.

Wind companies are also facing the expiration of a long-standing federal tax break, that some say could devastate the industry.

The production tax credit, which provides a 2.2 cents a kwh subsidy, has become a wedge issue in the presidential race.

President Barack Obama has been touting his support of the credit, set to expire December 31, while Mitt Romney, is opposing it. 

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has said he opposes the wind credit, and that has galvanized Republicans in Congress against it, perhaps dooming any extension or at least delaying it until after the election despite a last-ditch lobbying effort from proponents this week.

Without it, wind manufacturing jobs could take a devastating dive. 

But without the tax credit in place, the wind business “falls off a cliff,” said Ryan Wiser, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who studies the market potential of renewable electricity sources.

The industry’s precariousness was apparent a few weeks ago at the Gamesa factory, as a crew loaded the guts of the company’s newest model of the component, a device known as a nacelle, into its fiberglass shell. Only 50 completed nacelles awaited pickup in a yard once filled with three times as many, most of the production line stood idle, and shelves rated to hold 7,270 pounds of parts and equipment lay bare.

 Read the full story here.