Circumvention Requests on Solar Cells an Attempt to Avoid AD/CVD Investigations, Importers Say

An anti-circumvention inquiry requested by a U.S. industry coalition amounts to an attempt to impose new antidumping and countervailing duties on solar cells from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam without the strictures of real AD/CVD investigations, rather than serving as valid allegations of circumvention of Chinese solar cells duties, two U.S. importers said in a brief filed Sept. 15 asking the Commerce Department not to initiate the inquiries.

“The value and volume of trade at issue is so substantial that it would not be appropriate to apply AD/CVD duties to these imports through an anti-circumvention proceeding,” the brief said. Given the volume of solar cell imports from Malaysia, Thailand and Thailand, the anti-circumvention inquiry would cover billions of dollars in trade comprising over half of overall solar cell and module imports into the U.S., the brief said. “That would place this case as among the largest cases in terms of value of trade that Commerce has ever conducted.”

The anti-circumvention requests, filed by the American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention in August (see 2108250080), “seek to avoid an investigation into whether the CSPV cells and modules produced in Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam are actually subsidized or sold to the United States at less than fair value,” said the brief, filed by NextEra Energy Constructors and Florida Power & Light.

The inquiry requests also seek to apply AD/CV duties on solar cells to solar ingots in wafers, which Commerce has found are not subject to solar cells duties, even when used to make solar cells in third countries, the brief said. “The manufacture of [a solar] cell is not possible without an ingot or wafer, but an ingot or wafer is unable to produce electricity without substantially more processing to convert them into cells,” the importers said.

Indeed, in the original investigation on solar cells from China “Commerce specifically declined to adopt the petitioner’s proposed scope language -- which would have included cells manufactured in third countries from Chinese wafers or ingots in the scope of the [orders] covering Chinese cells -- over the petitioner’s claim that the resulting scope could be easily circumvented,” the brief said.