U.S. trade officials have finalized high tariffs on most types of solar panels from Southeast Asia, a significant step towards resolving a year-long trade case in which U.S. manufacturers accused Chinese companies of unfairly flooding the market with cheap goods.

This lawsuit was filed last year by South Korea's Hanwha Qcells, Arizona-based First Solar Inc, and several smaller manufacturers seeking to protect billions of dollars in investments in solar manufacturing in the U.S.

The petitioning group, the Solar Energy Manufacturing Coalition of the United States, accused major Chinese solar panel manufacturers with factories in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam of shipping panels at prices below production costs and receiving unfair subsidies that make U.S. goods uncompetitive.

The tariffs announced on Monday vary significantly by company and country, but are generally higher than the preliminary tariffs announced at the end of last year.

The combined anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Jinko Solar products from Malaysia are among the lowest at 41.56%. Competing products from Trina Solar operating in Thailand face a duty of 375.19%.

Both Jinko and Trina did not immediately comment.

Products from Cambodia will face tariffs of over 3,500% because manufacturers chose not to cooperate with the U.S. investigation.

"These are very strong results," said Tim Brightbill, attorney for the U.S. manufacturing group, in a call with reporters. "We are confident that they will address the unfair trade practices of Chinese-owned companies in these four countries, which have harmed the U.S. solar manufacturing industry for far too long."

The tariff threat against countries that supplied more than $10 billion worth of solar products to the U.S. last year, which accounted for a large portion of domestic supply, has caused significant changes in global solar trade. Imports from the four target countries this year are only a small fraction of what they were a year ago, while panel shipments from countries like Laos and Indonesia are increasing.

Critics of this effort, including the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), say the tariffs will harm U.S. solar manufacturers as they will raise prices for imported cells assembled into panels by U.S. factories. Those facilities have increased since a new clean energy production subsidy was established in 2022.

Officials from SEIA have not yet commented immediately.

To finalize the tariffs, the International Trade Commission must vote in June on whether the industry is significantly harmed by dumped and subsidized imports.



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