The American Alliance for Photo voltaic Manufacturing Commerce Committee (AASMTC), the identical group that requested an antidumping/countervailing obligation (AD/CVD) investigation earlier this 12 months on photo voltaic merchandise coming from Southeast Asia, right now filed “crucial circumstances allegations” with the Dept. of Commerce concerning surges of photo voltaic imports from Vietnam and Thailand which are hurting the U.S. photo voltaic manufacturing trade. The most recent submitting is regarding a 39% enhance in imports from Vietnam and a 17% enhance from Thailand between April and June 2024, when in comparison with January via March 2024.
The unique AD/CVD petition was filed in April 2024 by Wiley Rein, which is representing AASMTC, and the group says import ranges from the talked about nations surged nearly instantly.
“After we submitted our petitions a couple of months in the past, a number of China-based firms working in Thailand and Vietnam seem to have actively accelerated their U.S. photo voltaic exports, prone to evade impending duties. We had been due to this fact compelled to file these crucial circumstances allegations in response to those new surges of imports,” stated Tim Brightbill, accomplice at Wiley Rein and lead counsel to the petitioners. “We can not permit these nations — and Chinese language-owned firms — to proceed harming the U.S. market unabated.”
The Dept. of Commerce took on the AD/CVD investigation in Might, and the U.S. Worldwide Commerce Fee made an affirmative preliminary willpower in June that photo voltaic panel imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam had been unfairly being dumped into the U.S. market at costs that made American producers unable to compete. Commerce is predicted to make its personal preliminary choices on countervailing duties in September and antidumping duties in November. Last determinations and tariff quantities would then are available in spring 2025.
Within the meantime, a crucial circumstances discovering might assist offset elevated import numbers throughout an investigation. If Commerce finds crucial circumstances, duties will be imposed retroactively on merchandise as much as 90 days earlier than the preliminary determinations. For the duties to be finalized, the U.S. ITC should additionally discover {that a} surge in imports is hurting the home trade.
AASMTC’s crucial circumstances petition issues crystalline silicon cells, whether or not or not assembled into modules, from Vietnam and Thailand.
