I don't necessarily think you're wrong, I am more addressing your rhetoric that suggests your informed opinion invalidates the story, especially because the anecdotes you present are examples of companies deliberately lying to the media for their own personal gain. Yet the problem is the media...

FTA: President Donald Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels has led U.S. renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of more than $2.5 billion in large installation projects, along with thousands of jobs, the developers told Reuters.

So are the developers lying? Maybe... but it's still totally legitimate to report that this claim was made. Some things you just have to take at face value because you're not privy to secret boardroom meetings where plans to deceive the public for profit are conceived.

Here is another article from another publication about a different tariff story.

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/391185-three-arkansas-comp...

Based on the reasoning you presented in your OP (pre-edit), I should just assume that they're lying and are really just appealing to Trump's ego in order to maximize profits. Right?

In either case the media can't really know the truth so they just report it and maybe spin the story to one side based on readership.