WASHINGTON: US trade officials have finalised steep tariff levels on most solar cells from Southeast Asia, a key step towards wrapping up a year-old trade case in which American manufacturers accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with unfairly cheap goods.
The tariffs on companies from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam will still need to be ratified at a meeting of the International Trade Commission in June.
The case was brought last year by Korea's Hanwha Qcells, Arizona-based First Solar Inc and several smaller producers seeking to protect billions of dollars in investments in US solar manufacturing.
The petitioner group, the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, accused big Chinese solar panel makers with factories in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam of shipping panels priced below their cost of production and of receiving unfair subsidies that make American goods uncompetitive.
While Monday's move came after a year-long investigation, it follows on the heels of US President Donald Trump launching blistering trade wars through tariffs around the globe.
Trump's tariffs, which have seen the White House impose eyewateringly high levies before suspending some of them to allow for negotiations, are aimed at reducing US trade imbalances.
The Commerce Department’s statement said the new recommended tariffs on solar cells, however, were taking specific aim at “transnational subsidies.”
“In the CVD investigations involving Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, Commerce found that companies in each country were receiving subsidies from the Government of China,” the statement said, referring to countervailing duty probes.
“These are among the first CVD investigations wherein Commerce has made an affirmative finding that companies received transnational subsidies.”
The tariffs unveiled on Monday vary widely depending on the company and country, but were broadly higher than
the preliminary duties announced late last year.
Among firms targeted were Chinese companies Jinko Solar and Trina Solar.
Products from Cambodia are set to face duties of up to 3,521%, according to the Commerce Department.
Jinko Solar faced duties of 40% for exports from Malaysia and around 245% for goods from Vietnam.
Trina Solar in Thailand will see duties of more than 375%, and more than 200% for products from Vietnam.
Products from Cambodia face duties of more than 3,500% because its producers elected not to cooperate with the US probe.
If imposed, the new levies will come on top of the blanket 10% levy imposed by Trump since early April on products entering the United States from most trading partners.
“These are very strong results,” Tim Brightbill, an attorney for the US manufacturing group, said on a call with reporters. “We are confident that they will address the unfair trade practices of the Chinese-owned companies in these four countries, which have been injuring the US solar manufacturing industry for far too long.”
The threat of tariffs on countries that supplied more than US$10 billion (RM43.7 billion) of solar products to the United States last year, accounting for the vast majority of domestic supplies, has caused a dramatic shift in the global solar trade. Imports from the four targeted countries this year are a fraction of what they were a year ago, while shipments of panels from nations like Laos and Indonesia are on the rise.
Critics of the effort, including the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) trade group, have said tariffs would harm US solar producers because they would raise prices on the imported cells that are assembled into panels by American factories. Those facilities have been on the rise since a new subsidy for clean energy manufacturing was created in 2022.
SEIA officials were not immediately available for comment.
In order for the tariffs to be finalised, the International Trade Commission must vote in June on whether the industry was materially harmed by the dumped and subsidised imports.
In 2023, the United States imported US$11.9 billion (RM52.1 billion) in solar cells from the countries named in the latest action, according to official data. – Reuters, AFP
