The US Department of Commerce has again delayed its decision on imposing additional tariffs on imports of Chinese solar products, and experts said yesterday the move will help reduce Chinese solar companies' potential losses.
A preliminary determination, which tests whether Chinese solar companies have been selling solar panels or cells in the US at unfair discounts while receiving illegitimate government subsidies, will be made on March 2, Tim Truman, a spokesman for the Department of Commerce, said Friday.
It is the second time the Department of Commerce has changed the schedule of its decision. The preliminary determination had originally been scheduled for January 12, before being delayed to February 13.
"It's common practice for the Department of Commerce to change the schedule due to the complexity of the investigation," Li Fayin, a lawyer at AllBright Law Offices, told the Global Times.
Li denied media suspicions that the Commerce Department's decision to delay the original schedule was made after a US court in Washington ruled in December that Chinese-made tires should not be subject to countervailing duties imposed by the US Commerce Department.
"There are no direct connections between the two cases, and the ruling on Chinese tires is not the final decision," he said.
The delay allows the Department of Commerce "sufficient time to conduct a comprehensive investigation and to complete a thorough and fair analysis of the subsidies at issue," Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld AG's US unit, said in a statement Friday.
SolarWorld filed a complaint on October 19 with the US International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce, seeking anti-dumping and countervailing duties to offset the Chinese government's unfair trade practices.
Li said the deadline for the preliminary determination is March 17, so the Department of Commerce is still likely to delay the schedule for the third time.
"The delay will benefit Chinese solar exporters, as the implementation of potential duties will be delayed too," he told the Global Times.
Besides responding actively to the US charges, Chinese solar companies can focus on the domestic market or expand overseas to offset the negative impact of potential duties, Song Liang, an energy analyst at the Distribution Productivity Promotion Center of China Commerce, told the Global Times.
China may double its installations of solar panels this year, absorbing excess production that depressed prices and margins in 2011, Shi Zhengrong, CEO of Suntech Power Holdings Co, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos Friday.
The nation may add 4 gigawatts or more of solar panels, compared with about 2.2 gigawatts installed in 2011, he estimated.