Game On

Bill Opalka | Jan 30, 2012

 

The battle is heating up in the solar trade war. On one side, the government came ever closer to hammering Chinese imports, while on the other, such an action was determined to put thousands of jobs at risk.

The U.S. Department of Commerce just said that duties would be retroactive 90 days from any preliminary determination of Chinese dumping, while at the same time a free trade organization was releasing a report that said 60,000 jobs could be lost from that very same trade case.

“This is unprecedented that the Commerce Department would find critical circumstances even before a preliminary determination of harm,” said Ben Santarris, a spokesman for SolarWorld USA, the company leading the trade complaint.

Santarris said the Commerce Department is scheduled to issue a preliminary ruling on March 2. What the new ruling means is that if duties are warranted, they would be imposed retroactively for 90 days, or back to December 2. The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing has charged that Chinese cell and modules manufacturers had surged imports in recent months, especially since the trade case was initially filed in October in order to beat any duties that may be imposed.

While this was playing out, the other side of the dispute, the Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy was holding a conference call to release a report that said duties, even modest ones, would raise prices and kill tens of thousands of jobs.

CASE had commissioned energy consultancy The Brattle Group to study the impact of duties on domestic employment, up and down the supply chain. Its bottom line: Even accounting for jobs added by American manufacturers who would gain market share when prices rose on Chinese goods, overall job losses would be massive.

The report said that a 100 percent tariff on imported solar PV cells and modules from China would result in as many as 50,000 net lost jobs in the U.S. over the next three years. Furthermore, retaliatory tariffs placed on U.S. exports of polysilicon to China would put nearly 11,000 more American jobs at risk in the first year following tariff imposition.
 
The study examined the impacts that imposing a 50percent tariff or a 100 percent tariff would have on the U.S. solar industry through 2014. Both scenarios are lower than the up to 250 percent  tariffs sought by SolarWorld.

“We cannot allow one company’s anti-China crusade to threaten the U.S. solar industry and tens of thousands of American jobs.” Jigar Shah, President of CASE, said on a Monday conference call.
 
Another aspect analyzed in the report is the effect of likely retaliation by the Chinese to any U.S. imposed tariff on imported solar cells from China. According to the report, “retaliation would likely take the form of a tariff on U.S. polysilicon exports. The U.S. is a major supplier of this component of photovoltaic modules, and removing Chinese demand for U.S.‐manufactured polysilicon is expected to result in around 10,881 U.S. job losses in the first year after tariffs are imposed.”

The solar industry would have collateral damage to deal with by the trade case. “The report doesn’t even address the policy confusion tariffs would case,” Shah added.

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