The American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee (AASMTC), the same group that requested an antidumping/countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigation earlier this year on solar products coming from Southeast Asia, today filed “critical circumstances allegations” with the Dept. of Commerce regarding surges of solar imports from Vietnam and Thailand that are hurting the U.S. solar manufacturing industry. The latest filing is concerning a 39% increase in imports from Vietnam and a 17% increase from Thailand between April and June 2024, when compared to January through March 2024.
The original AD/CVD petition was filed in April 2024 by Wiley Rein, which is representing AASMTC, and the group says import levels from the mentioned countries surged almost immediately.
“When we submitted our petitions a few months ago, several China-based companies operating in Thailand and Vietnam appear to have actively accelerated their U.S. solar exports, likely to evade impending duties. We were therefore compelled to file these critical circumstances allegations in response to these new surges of imports,” said Tim Brightbill, partner at Wiley Rein and lead counsel to the petitioners. “We cannot allow these countries — and Chinese-owned companies — to continue harming the U.S. market unabated.”
The Dept. of Commerce took on the AD/CVD investigation in May, and the U.S. International Trade Commission made an affirmative preliminary determination in June that solar panel imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were unfairly being dumped into the U.S. market at prices that made American manufacturers unable to compete. Commerce is expected to make its own preliminary decisions on countervailing duties in September and antidumping duties in November. Final determinations and tariff amounts would then come in spring 2025.
In the meantime, a critical circumstances finding could help offset increased import numbers during an investigation. If Commerce finds critical circumstances, duties can be imposed retroactively on merchandise up to 90 days before the preliminary determinations. For the duties to be finalized, the U.S. ITC must also find that a surge in imports is hurting the domestic industry.
AASMTC’s critical circumstances petition concerns crystalline silicon cells, whether or not assembled into modules, from Vietnam and Thailand.
See our extended coverage on the tariffs affecting the solar industry.