US trade officials are preparing to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four south-east Asian countries, while the International Energy Agency has said lessons from the energy crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had not been fully learned.
The US commerce department has announced the new tariffs, targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, after an investigation begun a year ago when American manufacturers of solar panels accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with subsidised, cheap goods.
Products from Cambodia would face the highest tariffs, of 3,521%, because its companies did not cooperate with the US investigation, while products made in Malaysia by the Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar face duties of just over 41%; rival Trina Solar’s products from Thailand will incur tariffs of 375%.
A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to make a final decision on the tariffs in June.
The case was brought last year by the Korean company Hanwha Qcells, Arizona-based First Solar and several smaller solar panel makers in the US. They accused Chinese companies with factories in Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam of shipping panels priced below their cost of production, owing to unfair state subsidies.
However, critics, including the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group, have said tariffs would harm US solar producers because they would raise prices on the imported cells that are assembled into panels at American factories.
Separately, the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, outlined concerns about the future of energy security ahead of a 60-country summit in London on Thursday and Friday that he is hosting with the UK energy secretary, Ed Miliband.
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Read moreIt will be attended by ministers from the US, Japan, France, Germany and India, and oil-producing states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, along with the bosses of big oil and gas companies and renewable energy companies. Russia is excluded, and China will be absent because of a diary clash, in a blow to the summit.
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sparked international sanctions, the loss of Russian gas from Europe, a spike in wholesale energy costs and a rush to secure alternative energy supplies.
Birol told the Financial Times he thought the “lessons from Ukraine have not yet been fully understood”, adding that there were three golden rules for energy security: diversification of supplies, sufficient political predictability to allow companies to make long-term investments, and global cooperation.
Europe remains heavily reliant on imported gas and markets have been volatile, amid changes to energy subsidies and regulations, and the trade war unleashed by Donald Trump’s frequent tariff announcements.
