A group of American solar manufacturers including Qcells, First Solar, Meyer Burger, and REC Silicon recently have jointly issued a statement accusing that the sharp increase in imported solar products from Vietnam and Thailand has harmed the US solar industry.
The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee has filed critical circumstances allegations with the US Department of Commerce through the law firm, Wiley Rein LLP. The import products are crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells, whether or not assembled into modules, from Vietnam and Thailand.
The alliance claims that since submitting an application in April to the US Department of Commerce to impose anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on Southeast Asian solar cells, cell imports from Vietnam and Thailand have surged by 39% and 17% respectively. This application aims to impose high tariffs on products from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Cambodia. The reason is that Chinese solar manufacturers in these regions dump their products to the US in order to avoid US trade restrictions on China.
The US International Trade Commission made a preliminary ruling on the application for anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on June 7th. If the latest allegations are upheld, retroactive tariffs could be imposed on imports arriving in the US within 90 days prior to June 7th.
The alliance also claims that companies in Vietnam and Thailand have increased their shipments to the US in order to avoid potential tariffs. Wiley Rein LLP stated that this year from January to March, the United States imported more than 5GW of crystalline silicon solar products from Vietnam and about 3.5GW from Thailand. From April to June, imports from Vietnam exceeded 7GW, while the number from Thailand reached 4.1GW. In June alone, the United States imported over 2.5GW of solar modules from Vietnam.
It is expected that the US Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission will make preliminary rulings on anti-dumping and countervailing investigations in September and November respectively, with the final ruling expected to be made in the spring of 2025.
Impact on the US market
After the alliance first filed an anti-dumping and countervailing investigations application, the Clean Energy Association predicted that if the ruling is successful, it may lead to a bottleneck in US cell supply, ultimately causing a price increase of up to $0.15/W for US made and imported solar modules.
The supply of solar cells in the US heavily relies on the aforementioned Southeast Asian countries, as well as Chinese companies and subsidiaries operating in these countries. Due to the incentive measures stipulated in the Inflation Reduction Act, there are more module plants than cell production bases, and the establishment of cell production bases is more time-consuming and costly.
Due to the inability of domestic production capacity in the US to meet demand, the new tariffs will push up the prices of modules using imported cells. However, in the past 18 months, the prices of the solar supply chain have dropped significantly, and the current proportion of modules in solar project costs is much lower than before, which may alleviate the impact of price increases on the US solar market.
