The Commerce Department finalized a decision on Friday to impose additional tariffs on solar panel manufacturers from certain Asian countries after determining late last year that they were skirting existing U.S. tariffs on China.
The decision largely echoes the preliminary findings the Commerce Department issued in December. Auxin Solar, a California-based manufacturer of solar modules, petitioned the department last year to investigate whether Chinese companies operating in those countries are circumventing existing anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese solar products.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY TOUTS 'AMERICA COMES FIRST' FOREIGN POLICY PLANS AT NIXON LIBRARY
“After a thorough, transparent, and data-driven investigation of eight companies across the four countries, Commerce found that five of the eight companies investigated are attempting to bypass U.S. duties by doing minor processing in one of the Southeast Asian countries before shipping to the United States,” the Commerce Department said in a statement Friday.
Still, the tariffs will not be operational for now, given the Biden administration’s Solar Emergency Declaration, which was issued last June for solar panels imported from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. That order created a 24-month “bridge” designed to exempt those countries from anti-dumping and countervailing duties while U.S. solar manufacturing ramps up, meaning the new tariffs cannot take effect until June 2024.
The tariff exemption sparked fierce opposition from U.S. solar manufacturers, who sharply criticized the Biden administration’s decision to leave in place the emergency declaration in light of the final decision.
“The White House should be absolutely ashamed that, despite its own Commerce Department determining that the Chinese are illegally violating U.S. trade law, it remains intent on protecting China’s predatory activity and rewarding their cheating,” Zach Mottl, the chairman of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which represents domestic producers and supports Commerce's investigation, said in a statement Friday.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
”We applaud the career officials at the Commerce Department for independently reviewing the facts of this case, which clearly show that China is illegally violating U.S. trade law to the detriment of American manufacturers and American workers,” he added.
The solar industry as a whole has been split on the rules. Larger solar manufacturers, including those who relied on imported cells and modules, had fiercely opposed the tariffs and had argued the mere possibility of them threatened to derail Biden’s climate agenda, as well as various incentives for manufacturers guaranteed by the Inflation Reduction Act.