SEIA to Join CASE in Trade Settlement Talks with China on the Solar Trade Dispute

Last week, Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) announced its decision of joining Coalition for Affordable Solar Energy (CASE) to hold a formal negotiation for trade settlement between USA and China. This is an act of preventing the U.S. PV industry from further harm, according to SEIA.

Since the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) accepted SolarWorld’s new phase of dumping and subsidy petition, CASE has started advocating that more tariffs against China will cause severe harm to the U.S’s PV industry.  Last week, SEIA jointed CASE to fight against the nation’s tariff on Chinese and Taiwanese PV imports because SEIA turned to doubt if more tariffs could bring positive consequences to domestic PV industry.

According to Solar Server’s report, SEIA and CASE together presented a webinar on March 13^th and expressed their position to the new phase of investigation.

“We are working together hand in hand to figure out how to reduce the impacts of this trade case,” said CASE CEO Jigar Shah.

“SEIA is working with CASE with the primary objective of achieving a negotiated solution,” noted SEIA Vice President of Trade John Smirnow. “This is something that we have been working on for almost a year and a half.”

The main purpose of this alliance is to combat with Chinese (and Taiwanese) PV products through dialogues, and SEIA said it has already contacted some key organizations include SolarWorld and China’s Chamber of Commerce Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME), PV Tech reported. All the proposals are waiting for further answers at the moment, but SEIA holds an optimistic attitude toward the talks.

ITC and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DoC) schedule for procedure of anti-dumping and countervailing investigation has already been postponed. It was originally scheduled to announce the initial judgment of countervailing tariff on March 28^th but is postponed afterwards to June 2^nd. This may be a representation of further trade negotiation between China and the US to conclude the long-running disagreement.