Domestic Solar Coalition Challenges China Solar Cells AD/CV Scope Exclusion at CIT
The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturers is challenging the International Trade Administration’s antidumping and countervailing duty orders on solar cells from China before the Court of International Trade, according to a press release issued by the group. The heart of the court challenge is the ITA’s decision to exclude from the scope of the AD/CV orders solar panels assembled in China from third-country solar cells. CASM is also challenging the ITA’s determinations not to investigate certain Chinese subsidy programs, and its decisions to afford several Chinese companies separate rate status.
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“With our cases, the U.S. government went a long way in instrumenting and attempting to halt the anti-competitive and destructive impacts of China’s illegal trade practices on America’s domestic solar industry,” said Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries America. “Now we are looking to finish the job.”
Because the AD/CV duty orders exclude Chinese panels assembled from third-country cells, Chinese producers can grow silicon crystal, slice that crystal into solar wafers, outsource conversion of those wafers to Taiwan or elsewhere, then bring them back for assembly into panels for export to the U.S. market without having to pay AD/CV duties, CASM said.
(See ITT’s Online Archives 12120633 and 12120630 for summaries of the ITA’s AD and CV duty orders, respectively. See also ITT’s Online Archives 12110817 for reactions by parties on the ITC’s final injury vote, including comments by counsel for SolarWorld on the scope exclusion.)