7 U.S. firms allege China 'dumping' solar panels

WASHINGTON -- Seven U.S. solar panel makers yesterday filed a broad trade case against the solar panel industry in China, accusing it of using billions of dollars in government subsidies to help gain sales in the U.S. market.

The companies also accused China of "dumping" solar panels in the United States for less than it costs to manufacture and ship them.

The trade case, filed at the U.S. Commerce Department, seeks tariffs of more than 100 percent of the wholesale import price of solar panels from China. Imports of Chinese solar panels to the United States totaled $1.6 billion in the first eight months of this year.

The filing was made by Solar World Industries America, the largest maker of conventional solar panels in the United States, and six other companies that withheld their names, as is permitted in the process. Masking the identities of complainants allows the companies to avoid accusations of protectionism from critics within the United States. And it can avoid retaliation if they do business in China.

As a result, it was unclear whether First Solar Inc., a thin-film panel maker started in Toledo and now based in Tempe, Ariz., or other Toledo-area solar firms are among the six filers. However, the case is based on the manufacture of traditional panels, so-called blue solar panels, which are not believed to be the type made by First Solar and other firms making panels in the Toledo area.

Commerce officials in China had no immediate comment about the solar panel filing, but long have opposed such trade cases.

The U.S. industry's trade filing will follow a quasijudicial path at the Commerce Department and a related U.S. agency, the International Trade Commission, that is designed to operate without political partisanship influence.

A solar company manager in China, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a telephone interview that in any trade case filed by the U.S. industry, "we would be well prepared and are confident we could defend it."

President Obama recently appeared to support the domestic solar industry's concerns in a White House news conference two weeks ago: "Even if the technology was developed in the United States, they end up going to China because the Chinese government will say, 'We're going to help you get started, we'll help you scale up, we'll give you low-interest loans or no-interest loans, we will give siting, we will do whatever it takes for you to get started here.'"

The filing is a sweeping effort by the hard-pressed U.S. renewable energy industry to use trade laws to slow or reverse the rapid rise of Chinese companies in the U.S. market.

But it may yet prove too late to save the U.S. industry. China already accounts for three-fifths of the world's solar panel production, giving it enormous economies of scale even as U.S. companies have been closing factories and laying off thousands of workers this year.

China exports 95 percent of its production, much of it to the United States, which has helped push wholesale solar panel prices down from $3.30 a watt of capacity in 2008 to $1.80 by January and now to $1.20. A typical solar panel might have a capacity of 230 watts.

Including installation, the U.S. solar power market is worth about $6 billion a year. So far, solar power generates only about one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. electricity because it is still more expensive than fossil fuels. Any price increase in the technology, as a result of tariffs, is not likely to improve that ratio.

Solar World Industries America, based in Hillsboro, Ore., is a subsidiary of Solar World, a German company. The U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies are allowed to file anti-dumping and antisubsidy cases if they produce in the United States.