Solar Companies Urge Commerce to Reject Circumvention Requests on Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam

More than 190 solar companies sent a letter Sept. 22 to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urging the rejection of requests to begin anti-circumvention inquiries on solar cells and panels from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. “Steep duties proposed by an anonymous group of petitioners would devastate thousands of U.S. solar companies and cause the industry to miss out on 18 gigawatts (GW) of solar deployment by 2023,” the Solar Energy Industries Association said in a press release.

“The massive duties called for in these petitions, ranging from 50% to as high as 250%, are already having an adverse impact on the U.S. solar industry and, if implemented, would devastate the industry and each of our individual companies,” the letter said. “Our nation’s ability to effectively address climate change and fuel sustained economic growth relies on rapid deployment of solar and clean energy in the next 2-3 years. The petitions put this growth at severe risk and threaten the livelihoods of more than 230,000 American solar workers. We urge you to use your authority and decline the anonymous petitioners’ request to initiate circumvention investigations.”

The letter mirrors arguments made in a brief filed with Commerce on Sept. 15 (see 2109170058). It says the petitioners’ characterization of the manufacture of solar cells from wafers sourced from China as “minor or insignificant directly contradicts what domestic solar manufacturers have represented to the U.S. government in every solar trade remedy case over the past decade.”

It reiterates the contention that the requests for anti-circumvention inquiries are “designed to avoid a full and fair inquiry into whether CSPV cell and panel imports from Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand are actually subsidized or sold to the United States at less than fair value.” The letter says that the petitioners are “also trying to avoid the requirement to establish harm from imports during a full U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) investigation and public hearing before the USITC Commissioners, and conveniently exclude domestic panel manufacturers’ own solar cell and panel imports from Malaysia and Vietnam.”

“We cannot emphasize enough how damaging these tariffs would be to our companies and the entire American solar industry. We urge you to use your discretion and reject these petitions, thereby avoiding significant harm to both the U.S. solar industry and our nation’s ability to meet President [Joe] Biden’s decarbonization goals,” the letter said.