A postponement of antidumping duties on solar panels entering the US from Vietnam will come to an end in June, the White House has said. The postponement was put in place in June of 2022 by the US President after the Department of Commerce found that Chinese solar panel producers were using Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia as intermediaries to get around US import duties.
Of note, in a Department of Commerce hearing a couple of weeks ago, the core argument made by opponents of Vietnam’s redesignation as a market economy, was that Vietnam was being used as a conduit for Chinese goods looking to circumvent US trade restrictions. In this context, this latest development, especially in an election year, could speak to the thinking at the White House on the matter, in that it may not want to be seen as allowing this sort of thing to happen and, by extension, may also not want to be seen as supporting Vietnam’s efforts to be designated a market economy.
Of course, politics should not be in play in the DOC’s investigation, but…