To respond to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s new investigation on the anti-dumping and countervailing issue against PV products imported from China to the U.S., several Chinese PV manufacturers has set their first mission as “to minimize products to be involved in.”
These Chinese manufacturers hope to defend that there is no dumping and hope this act can convince DOC of reducing PV items to be investigate instead of examing everything imported from China. Yingli, a Chinese manufacturer who shipped 27% of its modules to the U.S. in 3Q13 (most of them were used for utility-scale solar power plants), said that the investigating scale is broader than the earlier one in 2011. Except for PV cells, PV modules and BIPV materials made in Taiwan are all included.
Jinko Solar also pictured a situation with negative influence for Chinese PV industry’s future development if the new petition is accepted and high duties are imposed. Yet this is still not clear because there may be other associations that are ready to react. Jinko Soar, like Yingli, shipped lots of modules to the U.S. The company turned from loss to profit in 3Q13 with revenue of US $320 million (net income US $16.91 million), raised 11.5% y-o-y. Demand from the Northern America shared 10% of the total 518.9MW shipment, which made the region one of the top three market of Jinko.
This anti-dumping and countervailing investigation is an answer toward SolarWorld’s petition that accused a PV product dumping from both Taiwan and China. The dumping rate accused were respectively 75.68% and 165.04%. Additionally, SolarWorld insists that there are still unbalanced subsidies in China. This January, ITC had announced that the petition was filed as a case and there will be a conclusion of investigation on February 14th. If actual harm is confirmed, DOC will continue investigating related issues. According to DOC’s statistic, PV products imported from China to USA were worth US $2.1 billion, and from Taiwan, $510 million in 2012.
The previous solar trade war between China and USA was conducted on November 8th, 2011, and additional anti-dumping duties (rated 18.32%~249.96%) and countervailing duties (rated 14.78%~15.97%) were imposed. However, some Chinese manufacturers avoid paying these duties by purchase PV cells from other regions like Taiwan. This is also the reason why SolarWorld decided to raise the second petition.
