In response to a huge backlash by solar developers and clean energy advocates, President Joe Biden June 6 suspended for two years the tariff on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia. The panels at issue are being investigated by the Department of Commerce for allegedly circumventing anti-dumping restrictions on China by using Chinese parts in the solar arrays, according to a claim by U.S.-based solar panel manufacturer Auxin.
“Today’s actions protect existing solar jobs, will lead to increased employment in the solar industry and foster a robust solar manufacturing base here at home,” Abigail Hopper, Solar Energy Industries Association CEO, said on Monday.
“This is an important and badly needed intervention by the Biden Administration which will hopefully stabilize the solar panel supply chain and help more large-scale solar projects come online sooner,” added V. John White, Center for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Technology executive director.
During a California Budget Subcommittee hearing last Thursday, Jan Smutny Jones, Independent Energy Producers executive director, told lawmakers that the Commerce Department investigation caused solar development in California to “grind to a halt.”
Auxin warned that Biden is interfering with a quasi-judicial process. “By taking this unprecedented–and potentially illegal action, he has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law,” said Auxin CEO Mamun Rashid. The company alleged that China was producing panels in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam and using Chinese parts to get around the U.S. anti-dumping restrictions. Rashid said if the president supports domestic industries, including with grants, solar cells and wafers, “Auxin is ready, willing, and able to meet” the challenge to scale up.
On Monday, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to allow solar development to continue and to advance other clean energy projects dependent on foreign imports.
While the two-year waiver is good news, particularly for utility-scale solar, “the waiver does not appear to technically stop the Anti-Dumping/Countervailing Duties process,” Bank of America Global Research concluded. The 24 months “should sizably grant adequate relief for the industry to find alternative pathways to producing panels in the interim,” wrote the bank’s research analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith.
The Defense Production Act authority invoked also aims to advance transformers and electric grid components; heat pumps; insulation; and hydrogen electrolyzers, fuel cells, and platinum group metals.
Use of this legal authority, according to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, will help DOE “strengthen domestic solar, heat pump and grid manufacturing industries while fortifying America’s economic security and creating good-paying jobs, and lowering utility costs along the way.”
Not collecting added tariffs on imported solar panels for at least two years “is the most meaningful part of the announcement,” said Frank Maisano, senior principal with the Washington DC-based Energy Resolution Group.
