China proposed four claims regarding how Section 201, initiated by former US President Donald Trump in January 2018, that imposes tariff on solar panels with a certain level of capacity, has violated the world trade regulations, though a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute panel had overruled the accusation from China on September 2nd.
The coverage of Reuters pointed out that a dispute panel formed by 3 individuals had overruled the four accusations brought up by China, and stated that the tariff measures implemented by the US do not violate world trade regulations, thus the latter has won the case.
The reason for the implementation of Section 201 can be attributed to the setbacks experienced by a bankrupted US solar supplier back in 2017. The company claimed to have sustained the impact of a mass quantity of cheap solar products imported from Asia, which prompted it to file a lawsuit. The US International Trade Commission (USITC) agreed with the statement in October, which facilitated the establishment of Section 201 during 2018.
The US started to impose heavy tariff on imported solar cells and modules since January 22nd 2018. A tariff of 30% was imposed on 2.5GW of imported solar products for the first year, and an increase of 5% was expected in each subsequent year for a total of 4 years. The statistics of Bloomberg indicate that a large quantity of China-made solar panels had flocked into the US at the end of 2017 since clients were hoping to avoid the 30% solar tariff.
China had proposed an appeal under the dispute mechanism of WTO, and pointed out from the four accusations that the US did not prove the cause and effect between the increase in imported solar and severe damages. The dispute division formed a dispute panel in August 2019, who published an overrule report on September 2nd, where the dispute division would accept the report from the panel within 60 days unless either the US or China lodges and appeal.
US trade representative Katherine Tai commented in her statement that she is happy to see WTO experts overruling China’s accusations of the US solar protection measures.
(Cover photo source: pixabay)