Solar Cell Exporters Bring Suits Challenging Countervailed Transnational Subsidies
Exporters brought a number complaints Aug. 22 and Aug. 25 challenging the Commerce Department’s decision to countervail transnational subsidies in its investigations on solar cells from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam (Boviet Solar Technology v. United States, CIT #s 25-00160 and 25-00162; JA Solar Vietnam Co. v. United States, CIT #s 25-00157 and 25-00158; Trina Solar Science & Technology (Thailand) v. United States, CIT # 25-00166 and 25-00169; Canadian Solar International v. United States, CIT #s 25-00159 and 25-00161; Jinko Solar (Vietnam) Industries Company v. United States, CIT #s 25-00171 and 25-00172).
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They also opposed the department’s antidumping duty investigations for various reasons.
Exporters Boviet Solar Technology, JA Solar USA and Trina Solar Science & Technology (Thailand), Jinko Solar (Vietnam) Industries Company and Canadian Solar International all argued in five separate complaints that countervailing duties on transnational subsidies are illegal.
Boviet, JA Solar and Jinko Solar also challenged the department’s price benchmark selections in the Vietnamese investigation and its affirmative finding of critical circumstances.
They also said that the mandatory respondents, Boviet and JA Solar, were wrongly hit with adverse facts available for failing to report that they participated in a Vietnamese program that exempted Vietnamese producers from paying duties on raw material imports if they were considered "export processing enterprises." Commerce held in the determination that Vietnam didn’t have a “rigorous customs enforcement” system and, thus, that the duty exemption program was countervailable.
Jinko Solar particularly said it was challenging Commerce’s determinations that the mandatory respondents’ purchases of Chinese-origin silicon wafer, solar glass, silver paste and polysilicon were all made at less-than-adequate remuneration and that the producers from which the respondents ordered the inputs were controlled by the Chinese government.
Trina, meanwhile, argued that Commerce was wrong to determine that two of its input suppliers were “authorities” controlled by the Chinese government. It also challenged the department’s affirmative critical circumstances finding regarding its Thailand investigation, and it said Commerce abused its discretion by failing to also investigate whether its surrogates, Malaysian exporters, also benefitted from a transnational subsidy.
And Canadian Solar further challenged the tier two benchmark price selections in the Thai CVD investigation.
Regarding the antidumping duty investigations, Boviet, JA Solar and Jinko Solar described in three complaints the Vietnamese investigation’s primary issue as Commerce’s decision to remove Malaysian imports of glass inputs into Indonesia from the Indonesian glass surrogates’ data. Commerce said it did so because evidence indicated Malaysia subsidized its glass production, Boviet claimed.
“This adjustment to the glass surrogate value constituted the majority of the calculated margin -- in other words, if the Department did not remove Malaysian imports the mandatory respondents margins would be de minimis or close to de minimis,” Boviet said.
Jinko Solar, which was a mandatory respondent in the AD investigation, further challenged Commerce’s valuation of other of its inputs: junction boxes, a couple glues, polysilicon, solar wafers, dust-free cloth, trimethyl aluminum and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. It also objected to the department’s calculation of its ocean freight and marine insurance costs.
In turn, JA Solar added that Commerce should've used more-specific PVinsights data. If not, it agreed with Boviet that the department should have included the Malaysian glass inputs in its Indonesian normal value calculation.
Trina and Canadian Solar, meanwhile, each challenged the department’s Thai antidumping investigation, for which Trina was the sole mandatory respondent. They said Commerce wrongly found a particular market situation existed in Thailand for solar wafer and solar glass inputs and mistakenly imposed a double remedy by failing to adjust Trina’s AD by its countervailed subsidies. And they argued the department shouldn’t have adjusted Trina’s solar wafer costs using the major input rule, as that caused its wafer purchase price to jump what Trina described as an “egregious” 352%.