US solar industry relieved on move vs imported panels

AS expected, the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on Wednesday made recommendations to the Trump administration to impose import tariffs on imported solar panels from other countries.

But in a surprise, the ITC’s proposed remedies were not as stringent as a pair of companies asked for and that led to a collective sigh of relief from other segments of the solar industry— in particular, from rooftop solar companies in California.

“I was on pins and needles,” said Barry Cinnamon, chief ex- panel manufacturing sector.

Among the recommendations were calls to apply tariffs of up to 35 percent on solar panels and as much as 30 percent on solar cells that would decline over time. Another commissioner called for import quotas that would increase over four years.

Those remedies fell well short of what was called for by Suniva and SolarWorld, the two companies that brought the case to the ITC via a little-used provision in trade cases called Section 201.

For example, the two manufacturers asked the ITC to include a tariff of at least 25 cents per watt on solar cells and 32 cents per watt on modules, among other things.

But Cinnamon said the recommendations offered on Wednesday will work out to about 10-15 cents per watt.

“It will be negative but it won’t be overwhelmingly negative” for the rest of the industry, Cinnamon said.

Worried over price increases

Opponents of Suniva and SolarWorld’s petitions worried an increase in the price of solar cells and panels would lead to higher prices for rooftop and utilityscaled solar projects.

Any potential changes in the $ 29- billion solar industry have an outsized impact in California, which accounts for more than one- third of the nation’s 260,000 workers in

More than half of those jobs are in solar installation and California is home to the largest market share of rooftop solar in the country.

The case however.

The ITC recommendations is far from done, now move on to President Donald Trump, who has until mid-January to accept or reject the remedies or come up with his own.

Suniva and SolarWorld have argued that cheap imports of foreign solar panels and modules—mostly from China and Southeast Asia—have decimated their companies, leading each to declare bankruptcy.

Trump, who has backed an “America First” trade policy, is scheduled to travel to China next Chinese government to discuss a host of security and trade issues.

“It’s worth noting that in no case did a commissioner recommend anything close to what the petitioners asked for,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the industry’s biggest trade group. “That being said, proposed tariffs would be intensely harmful to our industry.”

SEIA claimed a decision that followed the parameters of the lead to a loss of 15,800 jobs in California and 88,000 jobs and Suniva disputed.

SolarWorld Americas CEO Juergen Stein called the recom- but Suniva executives were much more blunt.

In a statement, Suniva said the remedies “simply will not will not fix the problem the it, we’ll see very shortly the extinction of what remains of this manufacturing sector.”

The last time a president accepted a Section 201 recommendation was in March 2002 when George W. Bush imposed a tariff on steel. He lifted the tariff nine months later.