A moratorium on antidumping duties on solar panels shipped from Vietnam to the US has ended with two key suppliers signalling they will be slowing down production in Vietnam as a result. China’s Longi Green Energy Technology and Trina Solar, specifically, have said they will be reducing their output from factories in Thailand and Vietnam.
Of note, Trina Solar, in November of last year, announced it would almost doubled its investment in Vietnam bringing the total invested to nearly US$900 million. It also said, around the same time, that it believes its solar panels should be exempt from the US tariffs on the ground that its polysilicon comes from the US and Europe and that it has created ‘a fully independent supply chain outside of China’, according to a statement on its website.
With this in mind, it’s not clear what might happen to the additional investment Trina Solar announced last year.
At the crux of the problem with said solar panels is the argument that Chinese goods are being finished in Vietnam and shipped to the US to get around antidumping and countervailing duties on these goods coming out of China. This is having broader implications beyond solar panels as well. Of note, it has also been a key argument against Vietnam’s redesignation from a non-market economy to a market economy by the US Department of Commerce.