The U.S. Department of Commerce has issued a preliminary determination in an anti-dumping probe, imposing tariffs of between 21.31 percent and 271.2 percent on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam—including from several Chinese-owned producers—citing evidence of unfair pricing and trade practices.
The decision, announced by the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration (ITA) on Nov. 29, follows complaints by U.S. manufacturers that Southeast Asian producers are dumping crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells—key components in solar panels—into the U.S. market at unfairly low prices, to the detriment of domestic producers.
The move represents the second major preliminary determination by the ITA this year. The prior Oct. 1 decision imposed tariffs as high as 292.61 percent on imports of photovoltaic cells—and the modules that are made with them—from the same four Southeast Asian countries that supply the majority of U.S. imports of such equipment….