Cheap Chinese Panels Spark Solar Power Trade War

The European Commission agreed to impose punitive import duties on solar panels from China in a move to guard against what it sees as dumping of cheap goods in Europe, prompting a cautious response from Beijing which called for further dialogue. EU commissioners backed EU Trade Chief Karel De Gucht’s proposal to levy the provisional duties by June 6 and make Chinese solar exports less attractive, two officials said.

Wolf Richter   www.testosteronepit.com   www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter The solar-panel industry, once fattened by taxpayer subsidies and false hopes, has been in a death spiral around the world. In the US, a slew of photovoltaic standouts like Solyndra went under, taking billions of subsidies and investor capital with them. In Germany, it has been just as brutal. Even large companies are licking their wounds.

Solar panels were cheaper than wind turbines for the first time last year in certain markets, per unit of capacity, and are rapidly closing a remaining gap in the full cost of power generation. Until now, wind power has been the leading low-carbon alternative to oil, coal and gas, outside large niche markets such as Germany, which has seen a huge ramp-up in installed solar. But that could change, with deep implications for the health of both industries if one substitutes the other.

When I first wrote about last week's preliminary decision by the US Department of Commerce to impose big anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese solar panels, I noted (among other things) that any final duties probably wouldn't lead to a long-term increase in US solar manufacturing but instead would simply cause Chinese production to move to other low-cost destinations (and, of course, raise US prices).

The U.S. Commerce Department announced tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels on Tuesday that it said had benefited from unfair subsidies by Beijing. The preliminary ruling came in response to a complaint from SolarWorld Industries America, a U.S. manufacturer that is a subsidiary of Germany's SolarWorld. The tariffs were lower than many analysts had predicted, however, boosting shares of Chinese solar-panel makers in Tuesday's trading. China's Yingli Green Energy closed up 12%, while Suntech Power was up 14% and Trina Solar finished up 8%. On the flip side, shares of U.S.

I've often noted how trade disputes have a habit of reproducing in other jurisdictions, and with the United States and China duking it out over trade in solar panels and other "green" technologies, it was only a matter of time before other countries got into the mix.   But even I'm a little surprised at just how fast India has gotten involved:

Tomorrow, the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce preliminary anti-dumping duties on Chinese solar panels in the latest chapter of the US-China dispute over trade in "green" goods.