Electrical Equipment / Components & Telecoms

Easy foreign trade to find Huacheng Foreign Trade Mailbox. With the entry into a new era of photovoltaic manufacturing, the U.S. photovoltaic industry will be driven by the manufacturing tax credit included in the “Inflation Reduction Act”. Although some domestic photovoltaic production facilities have been opened and operated, the U.S. photovoltaic industry Developers and installers will still rely on imported components and other products. Imported PV modules are required to meet Section 201 tariffs (exemption for bifacial modules) by 2025, and the U.S. Department of Commerce is currently deciding whether to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on PV modules from Southeast Asian countries.

The investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department began in March 2022 after California-based PV module assembler Auxin Solar Inc asked the Commerce Department to review PV modules imported from Southeast Asian countries that could evade tariffs. The company hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the PV business in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to determine whether wafers, aluminum frames, backsheets, etc. from China are used in these exported PV modules. If enough Chinese products are found in PV modules exported from Southeast Asian countries, the U.S. Department of Commerce can expand the scope of anti-dumping/countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigations to these countries.

Easy Foreign Trade contacted Huacheng Foreign Trade Mailbox. With the beginning of the investigation, the supply of photovoltaic modules from Southeast Asian countries has been restricted or interrupted. The photovoltaic modules supplied by the region in the past few years can meet 80% of the market demand in the United States. As a result of this investigation, some utility-scale photovoltaic projects in the United States have been forced to cancel or delay, and many industry players have asked the U.S. Department of Commerce to quickly end the investigation activities and put the supply of photovoltaic modules back on track.

The U.S. federal government stepped in in June, and Biden issued an executive order to suspend any tariffs related to the case for two years, ensuring that the U.S. has access to sufficient PV modules to meet domestic manufacturing-scale power generation needs . But the U.S. Commerce Department said it would continue to investigate and would give U.S. PV developers some breathing room to bring their PV projects online during this period.

Easy Foreign Trade contacted Huacheng Foreign Trade Mailbox. It is expected that the US Department of Commerce will announce its preliminary ruling next week, and then issue the final ruling in early 2023. The preliminary ruling has now been postponed until November 28, 2022.

The original petitioner, Auxin Solar, asked the Commerce Department for an extension of the deadline to fully develop and complete the investigation record. The Commerce Department said there are many complex issues related to the investigation, including multiple questionnaires and follow-ups, and the department needs more time to analyze. Auxin Solar argues that Southeast Asian PV module makers misled lawmakers by failing to provide the U.S. Commerce Department with all available information in a timely manner to draw initial conclusions quickly.

The extension will push back the deadline for a final ruling to April 2023, but could be pushed back to mid-June 2023.

Easy Foreign Trade contacted Huacheng Foreign Trade Mailbox. After Biden issued an executive order, some Southeast Asian module suppliers are expected to export PV modules to the United States as early as the end of the third quarter of this year. While the order eased supply issues, the PV industry has also been impacted by UFLPA regulations, with U.S. Customs reviewing and detaining some PV modules at ports.

Based on the uncertainty of the anti-circumvention investigation, the research institute Wood Mackenzie predicts that the installed capacity of photovoltaic systems in the United States will decrease by 6.3GW in 2022. While a two-year moratorium on tariffs would help, the company still said U.S. PV systems will be installed less than originally planned in 2022 and 2023.