USA decided to initiate the anti-dumping and countervailing investigation on Taiwan’s imported PV products. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) held a public hearing on January 22nd(EST). Taiwanese manufacturers, Neo Solar Power (NSP) and AUO, were asked to testify on behalf of Taiwan’s PV industry. The public hearing went on for about seven hours. In addition, Taiwanese manufacturers came up with supplementary information on the 27thand it’s projected that the initial judgment will be made by February 14th.
SolarWorld Industries Americas Inc. believed that PV products shipped from China and Taiwan have increased these years and it led to PV industry downturn in the US. Meanwhile, Taiwanese manufacturers asked SunEdison and SolarCity to attend as witnesses and claimed that the problem lied on SolarWorld itself – poor business model and weak competitiveness. There must be price incentives to popularize renewable energy.
“Taiwanese manufacturers have started to turn profitable since 2H13, thus it can prove that there’s no product dumping issue,” said Sam Hong, Taiwan PV Industry Association chairman and Director of NSP.
Relevant industries indicated that the quality and conversion efficiency is better for Taiwan’s PV products. Although the price is slightly higher than China’s, it’s within reasonable range. Furthermore, China and Taiwan provided about 70%-80% of PV products to USA last year. If these products were imposed heavy tariffs, it will increase overall local installation cost.
US Department of Commerce (DoC) has confirmed to continue with the anti-dumping investigation on the 23rd.