US expands trade penalties on solar imports from mainland, Taiwan

The U.S. Commerce Department proposed expanded penalties on some Chinese solar-energy imports in a victory for the U.S. unit of SolarWorld AG, which accused China of shifting production to Taiwan after it lost an earlier case.
The agency issued a preliminary finding that said overseas producers, including China’s Trina Solar Ltd. and Taiwan’s Gintech Energy Corp., sold the goods in the U.S. at unfairly low prices, a practice known as dumping. It called for duties ranging as high as 165 percent for some Chinese manufacturers and 44 percent for those in Taiwan, according to a department fact sheet.
“We should not have to compete with dumped imports or the Chinese government,” Mukesh Dulani, president of SolarWorld Industries America Inc., based in Hillsboro, Oregon, said over the weekend in an e-mail. The Commerce Department’s actions “should help the U.S. solar manufacturing industry to expand and innovate.”
The SolarWorld case has split the U.S. solar-energy industry, with manufacturers seeking protections against being undercut by cheap imports, and installers pressing for low-cost equipment, regardless of origin. It’s also the latest spat between the U.S. and China, the world’s largest economies, which are vying to become the global base for clean-energy manufacturing.
“We strongly urge the U.S. and Chinese governments to ‘freeze the playing field’ and focus all efforts on finding a negotiated solution,” Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said in a statement. “This continued, unnecessary litigation has already done serious damage, with even more likely to result as the investigations proceed.”
A final decision by Commerce Department will be made in mid-December. The independent U.S. International Trade Commission will determine by the end of January whether U.S. makers of the solar-power goods were harmed by the imports. If so, the duties will be permanent.
U.S. imports from the two nations of the crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, panels and modules used to make electricity from sunlight were valued at USD2.2 billion last year, the Commerce Department said.
Officials from China’s Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment. Taiwan’s economic office in the U.S. didn’t have a comment because the investigation involved Taiwanese companies, not its government, Frank Wang, a spokesman for the office, said in an e-mail.
Importers of Trina Solar’s goods will have to pay U.S. Customs agents a deposit of 11 percent on the goods, according to the Commerce Department. Those for Wuxi Suntech Power Co. will be subject to a duty of 14 percent. The agency’s fact sheet included a list of more than 40 Chinese companies that will be subject to the penalty tariffs. The department said a “China- wide entity” is subject to a 165 percent rate.
In the Taiwan investigation, the U.S. set penalties of 28 percent on Gintech’s goods and 44 percent on Motech Industries Inc. All other Taiwan producers are subject to a 36 percent rate. Bloomberg