House Fails to Reach Veto Override Threshold on Solar Tariffs
In a vote late on May 24, 214 members of the House of Representatives voted to override President Joe Biden's veto of a resolution that aimed to end the two-year pause on anti-circumvention deposits for some solar panel imports from Southeast Asia. There were 205 members who voted to continue the policy, and Congress needs a two-thirds majority to override a veto.
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House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., during an unrelated hearing May 25, asked the Coalition for a Prosperous America CEO what message Biden's action sends the Chinese Communist Party. He said it was unfortunate the veto override failed.
Michael Stumo replied that the message sent was: "We want cheap stuff at any cost, we don’t really care about forced labor, we don’t care about dirty coal being used to make the panels." He also argued that it takes 10 years of solar energy to pay back that carbon debt.
He said the 24-month moratorium on antidumping and countervailing duties in the trade remedy circumvention case is not really a temporary reprieve, because the companies are building wafer factories in the Southeast Asian countries, and that will reduce the Chinese content enough that CBP will consider the panels' country of origin to be where the panel is assembled, so it no longer will be considered a Chinese panel circumventing the AD/CVD action.
"We’ll get solar from those countries forever," he said.