Gina Raimondo Gets Letter In Support of Solar Tariffs from Steel Union Workers

Earlier this summer, a group of U.S.-based solar panel companies called the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee petitioned the ITC to investigate Chinese multinationals exporting solar to the U.S. from Southeast Asia. China solar is subject to Section 201 solar safeguard tariffs. At least four Chinese solar companies in Southeast Asia are already subject to anti-dumping duties after losing a case brought by California-based Auxin Solar.

The Alliance’s case builds on the prior Auxin AD/CVD case.

The companies that were subsequently hit with higher import duties benefited from a two year moratorium on those tariffs by the Biden administration. That moratorium was given because the White House claimed that the U.S. could face energy uncertainty due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and needed to stockpile solar. China is the dominant force all along the solar supply chain.

See CPA’s report on China’s solar investments under the Inflation Reduction Act, titled “Is There Any Stopping China From Becoming The Solar OPEC?”

The moratorium gave Chinese solar companies a chance to rev up production and load U.S. customers with solar cells and panels in expectation of higher prices once tariffs hit because of the Auxin case.  Companies found to be circumventing the tariffs in 2022 were not expected to pay the higher duties due to the moratorium, which ended in June. This new trade case goes after the solar manufacturers in Southeast Asia that used that time period to dump solar into the U.S. market in anticipation of the June 2024 AD/CVD charges. 

In 2023, the International Energy Agency reported that there was a year and a half of stockpiled solar panels sitting in American warehouses, depressing prices of newly made solar here. This is important because the Inflation Reduction Act law was designed to get U.S. based production up and running in order to reduce imports. But now imports in that two year period have been so great, that prices had fallen by more than 50% last year. 

It is worse now.

One of the companies in the solar Alliance, German multinational Meyer Burger, said it will no longer go ahead with plans to build a 2 gigawatt solar cell manufacturing facility in Colorado Springs. A planned 0.7 gigawatt expansion of Meyer Burger’s existing 1.4 gigawatt module production plant in Goodyear, Arizona, has also been put on hold.   

The decision means Meyer Burger’s existing solar cell production site in Thalheim, Germany, will continue to form the backbone of the company’s solar cell supply chain, PV Magazine, a solar industry publication, reported on August 26.  The company wanted to take out a loan against tax credits it would be receiving for solar production under the IRA law, but that seems to have failed to materialize.

As it is, businesses are selling solar modules out of inventory for as low as 10 cents a watt, far below what a U.S. manufacturer needs to break-even at this time.