The International Trade Commission on Tuesday recommended that President Trump impose tariffs as high as 35 percent on solar panel imports.
The federal commission determined last month that crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells were being imported into the U.S. in such great numbers “as to be a substantial cause of serious injury to the domestic industry.”
The commission will forward its report with the injury determination and its remedy recommendations to the president by Nov. 13, it said. The administration will have two months to decide whether to act on the recommendations.
The commission’s chairman recommended a tariff rate of 10 percent for each amount of solar cell imports that equals 0.5 gigawatts of electricity generation.
For imports of solar cells that exceed the 0.5 gigawatt level, Chairman Rhonda Schmidtlein recommends a tariff rate of 30 percent.
She also recommends that the tariff rate quota be implemented over four years in which the in-quota level is “incrementally raised and the tariff rate incrementally reduced.”
For solar power modules, a product that is distinct from solar cells, she recommends a 35-percent tariff rate to be incrementally reduced over the four-year period.
In April, solar panel manufacturer Suniva, later joined by SolarWorld, petitioned the commission for tariffs on solar cells and a price floor on modules for imports coming from anywhere in the world, arguing that cheap foreign products are harming the domestic panel industry. Both companies are bankrupt and foreign-owned (Suniva is based in Georgia but is majority-owned by a Chinese company), though they primarily manufacture in the U.S.
Other solar companies warn that tariffs could harm the industry’s progress by increasing their costs and would force them to raise prices for consumers. Solar costs have fallen by about 70 percent since 2010, and the domestic industry now employs more than 260,000 people, according to the Solar Foundation.
