Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 23 2022

AsiaElec TARIFFS AsiaElec

White House pauses new SE Asian

solar tariffs for two years

THE White House has announced that it will that has frozen the US solar industry.”
ASIA not impose any new tariffs on solar imports from Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of
four Southeast Asian countries for two years. A SEIA, told the New York Times in an emailed
Department of Commerce (DoC) investigation statement on Monday, June 6: “Today’s actions
into unfair trade practices – which could have protect existing solar jobs, will lead to increased
imposed new tariffs of up to 250% retroactive to employment in the solar industry and foster a
February – has chilled solar imports and instal- robust solar manufacturing base here at home.
lations across the US. She added: “During the two-year tariff suspen-
The two-year pause is to give developers and sion window, the US solar industry can return to
utilities adding solar more certainty, sources told rapid deployment while the Defence Production
the Wall Street Journal. Act helps grow American solar manufacturing.”
President Joe Biden also announced that he A small solar manufacturer, Auxin Solar, had
is invoking the Defence Production Act – in a petitioned the DOC in February, arguing unfair
rare move – to spur domestic manufacturing of trade practices. Its stance was backed by some
solar equipment. The US is lagging far behind labour unions, and also the Alliance of American
Asian countries in manufacturing solar system Manufacturing.
components. Auxin CEO Mamun Rashid, in response to
Chinese-owned or supplied solar manufac- the White House action, in a statement said that
turers in four Southeast Asian countries –Viet- Biden was interfering with a quasi-judicial DOC
nam, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia – are probe. “By taking this unprecedented – and
accused of circumventing existing tariffs against potentially illegal – action, he has opened the
Chinese manufacturers by not doing substan- door wide for Chinese-funded special interests
tial manufacturing of solar cells and modules to defeat the fair application of US trade law,” he
in their home country, thereby illegally circum- said.
venting US trade policy. Rashid told National Public Radio of the dire
Some 80% of imports of solar panels to the warnings of the impacts of the ongoing probe:
US come from the four Southeast Asian coun- “Yes, doom and gloom scenarios are out there.
tries, says the American Clean Power Associa- I’ve seen all the headlines.”
tion (ACP). And in 2020, as much as 89% of the If the DoC probe still finds that tariffs should
solar modules installed in the United States were be imposed, he said: “I think the business models
imported. will need to be reassessed and will be reassessed.
During the Obama era in 2012, the US had No one is going to walk away from hundreds of
imposed duties on Chinese products to counter- million or billion-dollar businesses.”
act subsidies and unfairly low prices. In 2015 the The furore has pitted Biden’s clean-en-
US imposed duties on Taiwanese imports as well. ergy goals against his desire to promote tough
The Solar Energies Information Adminis- pro-American trade practices and American
tration (SEIA), a trade group, had warned that domestic manufacturing.
some 24 GW of planned solar capacity over the Biden has a target of the US attaining net-zero
next two years may not proceed because of the emissions economy-wide by 2050 and of having
current probe, which is still ongoing and could 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030.
last months. A finding is expected by late August, Tariffs have also become more controversial,
though many solar advocates – including politi- with even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying
cians – have called for a faster review. that Biden could ease inflation by eliminating
As many as 100,000 US solar jobs could be some tariffs. Biden has said that inflation is his
lost even in the short term, SEIA said before the “top economic priority”.
two-year pause was announced. It does not help that Biden’s Build Back Bet-
The June 6 executive orders are a win for ter (BBB) legislation is stalled in Congress with
much of the US solar industry. no clear way forward. As currently written, BBB
Heather Zichal, CEO of ACP, said: “The pres- would extend the Investment Tax Credit, used
ident’s announcement will rejuvenate the con- for solar projects, by a decade.
struction and domestic manufacturing of solar In May, the International Energy Agency
power by restoring predictability and business (IEA) said that solar development in the US was
certainty that the Department of Commerce’s on track to decline 6.8% in 2022 – one of the few
flawed inquiry has disrupted. This action is nec- places in the world it is slowing down –because
essary due to the inconsistent and archaic regu- of uncertainty over trade and tax, the Wall Street
latory process at the Department of Commerce Journal reported.™

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