Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday announced its final determinations in an antidumping and countervailing duty investigation into solar cell imports from four Southeast Asian countries, setting individual tariff rates of more than 3,400%.
• “These are very strong results,” said Tim Brightbill, attorney for the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, the alliance of seven U.S. solar manufacturers that originally brought the case to the Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission. Brightbill spoke during a Monday press call. 
• The 3,403.96% subsidy rate set for four Cambodian solar exporters is “among the highest rates I've ever seen in any kind of countervailing duty investigation,” Brightbill said. 

Dive Insight:

The across-the-board dumping rate for Cambodia is 125.37%. The rate was set after the Cambodian producers dropped out of the investigation, leaving trade officials to base the rate on the facts available with “adverse inferences.”

The Commerce Department in 2023 found that manufacturers had operated in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam to dodge tariffs on Chinese-made solar components, and it imposed import duties accordingly. 

Chinese solar module manufacturer JinkoSolar is subject to an 38.38% subsidy rate in Malaysia, and an 125.91% dumping rate in Vietnam. Individual subsidy rates for Thailand go as high as 799.55%, while rates for Vietnam go to 542.64%. The average countervailing duty rate increase was 600%, Jeffries said in a Tuesday equity research report. 

“Most notably, CVD rates for Thailand/Cambodia were up 250[%]/~400[%] for select suppliers vs. updated [preliminary] determinations, while Malaysia/Vietnam saw more modest 20[%]/30[%] increases (with a few exceptions),” Jeffries said. “Per BNEF, the U.S. imported $12.9 [billion] in cells/modules from the four countries, or 77% of total module imports.” 

The finding could be a “modest positive” for First Solar “if it can capitalize by adding to backlog,” Jeffries said. First Solar is one of the seven companies that brought the case in two April 2024 petitions. Jeffries said it does not expect First Solar to be able to add to its backlog “in the near term, however. While a positive, NT uncertainties such as elevated inventory (20-50GW), and tariff and [Inflation Reduction Act] uncertainty (on developers) could delay any demand pull,” it said. 

Jeffries said that imports from the four countries have “declined markedly” since the beginning of the year, “so even though the final rates are far more punitive, the impact is largely baked in. With an elevated inventory level, we could see the true impact of AD/CVD starting in mid-26 (assuming most of the inventory is set to be deployed in '25 and early '26).”

Brightbill had a different view of the likely impact, however. He said the Commerce Department made critical circumstances findings for some of the exporters in Thailand and Vietnam, meaning they thought “there was a rush of imports to try and beat the imposition of preliminary duties.”

“And if both the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission make affirmative findings on critical circumstances, then the duties can be imposed 90 days earlier than they otherwise would have been,” Brightbill said. “Given the tremendous amount of imports coming in from these four countries, you can imagine how critical circumstances findings would be very impactful on any companies found to be surging.”

In a November interview, after President Donald Trump was reelected, Brightbill said he felt Trump’s focus on trade enforcement and tariffs would be a positive for the ongoing case.

The Trump administration “is focused on the use of tariffs — not only against China, but other countries, and it's focused on support for domestic manufacturing in a variety of industries,” he said in November. “So we think that is well-aligned with a variety of trade cases.”

The petitions faced stiff criticism from clean energy trade groups when they were first filed. The Solar Energy Industries Association — along with Advanced Energy United, the American Council on Renewable Energy and the American Clean Power Association — responded to the petitions with a press release that said they would cause “market uncertainty in the U.S. solar industry and [pose] a potential threat to the build-out of a domestic solar supply chain.”

Brightbill said Monday that “the last remaining step in the process is for the U.S. International Trade Commission to make affirmative determinations in these investigations,” adding that the alliance was “pleased to participate in the Commission's hearing last week, and we look forward to the Commission's determinations and votes scheduled for May 20.”