ACP Challenges Biden Administration Decision to Approve New Duties on Solar Equipment
Mar 28 2022
WASHINGTON DC, March 28, 2022 – The American Clean Power Association (ACP) expressed profound disappointment in today’s decision by the Biden administration to initiate a new anti-circumvention case that will lead to new duties on solar panels and cells assembled by allied trading partners from Southeast Asia. ACP CEO Heather Zichal issued the following statement:
“The Department of Commerce’s decision today signals that the Biden Administration’s talk of supporting solar energy is empty rhetoric. If its commitment to a clean energy future is real, the Administration will reverse this decision immediately. America’s solar workers and the clean energy community are watching and will remember. Overnight, the Commerce Department ignored precedent and subsequently drove a stake through the heart of planned solar projects and choked off up to 80% of the solar panel supply to the U.S. It must fix this now.
American workers will bear the pain of the decision to allow one rogue antagonist to abuse and manipulate trade laws for their own gain. The 230,000 proud Americans who work in the solar industry are calling on President Biden and Secretary Raimondo to reverse their decision and bring this matter to a speedy conclusion. Every day this investigation hangs over the solar community is a day of lost jobs and postponed solar projects critical to the Administration’s climate agenda.
Late last year, Commerce decided not to initiate a similar case. We’re confident that the facts will demonstrate that this case also has no merit, and that Commerce will uphold the decade-long precedent regarding the origin of solar cells and modules that the petitioner is desperately and repeatedly attempting to upend. Without a reliable supply of solar modules while this investigation proceeds, project construction will grind to a halt, American workers risk being laid-off or furloughed, and we will miss our emissions targets – all so that another litigious manipulator can be proven unfounded yet again.
The domestic solar industry calls on President Biden to reverse this decision and put American solar back on the right track. Solar workers and the communities they live in are watching and those who fought and believed in the promises of this Administration to a clean energy future will not forget.”