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U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) launched a reminder this week that any Southeast Asian photo voltaic panels imported earlier than June 6 have to be utilized inside 180 days or full AD/CVD tariffs will likely be charged.
When the Dept. of Commerce revealed its closing willpower in August 2023 that Chinese language photo voltaic cell and panel producers had been working in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as a solution to keep away from paying duties on Chinese language-made photo voltaic items, June 6, 2024, was decided to be the official start-date of obligation assortment, after President Joe Biden’s emergency pause had lifted. A clause was included that any “relevant entries” from Southeast Asia coming into after Nov. 15, 2022, and earlier than the termination-date of June 6, 2024, have to be used or put in in the US inside 180 days after June 6. Imported cells and panels not used inside the expiration date will likely be topic to AD/CVD.
“Merchandise which stays in stock or a warehouse in the US, is resold to a different celebration, is subsequently exported or is destroyed after importation shouldn’t be thought of utilized,” CBP said on this week’s discover.
There was a surge in photo voltaic imports because the president granted an emergency two-year pause on tariff assortment in June 2022. Preliminary numbers recommend that an oversupply of almost 20 GW (in comparison with anticipated market measurement) occurred in 2023.
A midterm assessment on separate Sec. 201 tariffs on imported photo voltaic cells and panels was accomplished earlier this week. The final consensus amongst home panel producers is that the safeguard measures are nonetheless essential to compete with imports. As well as, California-based photo voltaic panel assembler Auxin Photo voltaic is suing CBP and the Dept. of Commerce over the two-year pause in AD/CVD assortment, arguing that the delayed assortment is inflicting a “large and sustained wave of low cost [crystalline silicon] cells and modules” to enter the nation within the meantime, undermining Auxin’s potential to provide aggressive product at house.
“There have been quite a few essential bulletins of recent U.S. photo voltaic manufacturing capability as a result of Inflation Discount Act. It’s crucial that we rebuild the American photo voltaic provide chain and our management of this business. Nevertheless, all of those new plans at the moment are being undermined and are in danger resulting from a world import surge and large value reductions. In response to most reviews, costs are down 50% or extra, and imports are at the least double present demand, resulting in stockpiling of photo voltaic panels in warehouses, the place they may proceed to depress the market,” mentioned Timothy Brightbill, associate at Wiley Rein and commerce counsel to the American Alliance for Photo voltaic Manufacturing, after the midterm report was launched.
