Republicans in Senate Question Solar Duties Moratorium
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and nine other Republicans told President Joe Biden that he made a mistake by temporarily preventing antidumping and countervailing duties from taking effect is if the Commerce Department determines they are warranted in an anti-circumvention inquiry on imported Asian solar panels.
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First Solar, the largest U.S.-owned solar panel manufacturer, is opening a new factory in Ohio that will employ 500 people.
"We believe this decision increases our dependence on China, rewards unfair trade practices, including labor and human rights violations, undermines American jobs, and represents executive branch overreach," the senators wrote in a letter June 21.
"Already the United States is over-reliant on China for solar power. Currently, 80 percent of our solar panels come from China or Chinese companies, and this reliance is not market-based. China has used a variety of anti-free market practices, such as industrial subsidies, to come to dominate the solar sector. This is why the United States imposed anti-dumping and countervailing duty (AD/CVD) orders on unfairly traded solar panel imports from China as early as 2012. It is also why the Department of Commerce is actively investigating circumvention of those AD/CVD orders by solar panel producers and exporters in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The unprecedented and sweeping tariff moratorium prioritizes foreign solar panels over those made in the United States."
They said that the moratorium distorts the investigation "as the result of outside political pressure and climate activism," which "signals to China that our laws are malleable for the right price."