The U.S. International Trade Commission has activated steep duties to offset what it deems improper trade practices supporting U.S. solar imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
A linchpin arbiter in the nation’s trade disputes with foreign economies unanimously voted Tuesday that imports of solar cells and panels from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have materially harmed the domestic solar industry.
The affirmative vote of the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) means that stiff duties, also called tariffs, that the U.S. Department of Commerce had proposed against those imports will go into final effect in mid-June.
In calibrating the duties, Commerce aimed to precisely offset the degree of improper subsidization and price dumping that it found to underlie the focal imports, mostly from Chinese manufacturers operating in the four Southeast Asian countries.
The anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases originated with the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Committee, featuring domestic producers such as First Solar, Mission Solar and Hanwha Qcells.
The alliance greeted the ITC vote as a “decisive victory for domestic producers,” said Tim Brightbill, lead counsel for the alliance.
With the finding, the ITC did not reveal its determination on so-called critical circumstances, Brightbill said. The alliance alleges that Thailand and Vietnam mounted a surge in U.S. exports for the purpose of evading preliminary duties to be unveiled in the cases last fall, thereby creating critical circumstances. A favorable ITC finding could retroactively apply duties to those imports up to 90 days before the preliminary findings. Brightbill said he expected ITC action on the front soon but did not know when.
In a news conference, Brightbill and Michael Carr, executive director for the Solar Energy Manufacturers for American Coalition, said the ITC vote represented an important milestone in a long campaign to re-shore the American-original solar industry. Its dual prongs have been to establish and enforce curbs to improper trade practices and to promote and preserve stable tax incentives for new U.S. solar investments.
The unanimous vote of the ITC also effectively closes out the latest in a series of 13-month cases that the U.S. solar industry has mounted to curtail what it has deemed improperly traded imports from Chinese companies.
As Chinese manufacturers have relocated production assets from one geography to the next to evade exposure to U.S. import duties, the domestic industry has, in effect, refocused from one region to the next to plug leaks in its ship.
The first anti-dumping and anti-subsidy, or countervailing, duty cases targeted Chinese production in China. Others thereafter have focused on Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Now, industry rumors hint at action against imports from Indonesia and Laos.
Particularly distinguishing the current round of trade cases was Commerce’s first finding of transnational subsidization – in these cases, between China’s government and Chinese manufacturers operating in the four Southeast Asian countries.
In April, Commerce called for final anti-dumping duty (AD) rates of 125.37% and countervailing, or anti-subsidy, duty (CVD) rates of 3,403.96% on imports of cells and modules from Cambodia; 81.24% AD rates and 168.80% CVD rates from Malaysia; 202.90% AD rates and 799.55% CVD rates from Thailand; and 271.28% AD rates and 542.64% CVD rates from Vietnam.
Since the department outlined its preliminary duties in the current cases late last year, importers from the Southeast Asian countries have been subject to requirements to submit cash deposits or post bonds to reflect estimated duty rates. Now that the ITC has issued its final determination, U.S. Customs and Border Protection will switch into gear collecting final duties in just a few weeks.
