SolarWorld and coalition of US solar manufacturers petition to stop unfair trade by China’s state-sponsored industry

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA: Representing a coalition of seven US manufacturers of solar cells and panels, SolarWorld Industries America Inc., the largest domestic producer, today petitioned the federal government to halt what the company describes as an ever-rising tide of heavily subsidized solar cells and panels that China’s state-supported solar industry is illegally dumping into the American market.

The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing – representing a significant majority of US production of crystalline silicon solar cells and panels – filed complaints today with the US Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission seeking relief from China’s illegal trade practices. The complaints aim to end China’s decimation of US solar manufacturing and jobs.

The cases, which allege dumping margins well in excess of 100 percent as well as massive subsidies, are among the largest against China – and the largest in renewable-energy industry history.

“Artificially low-priced solar products from China are crippling the domestic industry,” said Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries America Inc., based in Hillsboro, Oregon. “As the strongest and most experienced US producer, SolarWorld is leading the effort to hold China accountable to world trade law.”

“China’s systematic campaign to dismantle the US industry has cost thousands of jobs in Arizona, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania,” Brinser said. “China’s wrongful tactics run systematically across the board; central planning has subsidized most facets of these companies’ business. China actually has no production cost advantage. Labor makes up a modest share of solar-industry costs, China’s labor is less productive, its raw material and equipment have come from the West and China must pay for long-distance shipping. Yet, massive state subsidies and sponsorship have enabled Chinese manufacturers to illegally dump their products into a wide-open US market.”

The petitions allege that the Chinese government – its state-controlled financial, utility and other institutions intermingled with its solar manufacturing industry – has deployed an arsenal of land grants, contract awards, trade barriers, financing breaks and supply-chain subsidies to advance its pricing and export aggression. China exports nearly all of its production to benefit from other markets’ consumption incentives while increasing output and impeding imports. Along the way, it also sidesteps US-level manufacturing standards for labor, quality, and the environment.

Imports of Chinese crystalline solar cells and panels rose more than 300 percent from 2008 to 2010. In July 2011 alone, exports exceeded those from all of 2010. In the first eight months of 2011, Chinese imports into the United States totaled $1.6 billion. Over the past 18 months, seven U.S. employers have shut down or downsized, not counting cutbacks among manufacturers of a variety of new solar technologies known as thin films.

Since 2006, SolarWorld has pursued a course of investment and expansion, creating hundreds of jobs in Oregon and California to undertake all solar-industry manufacturing steps – without loans, guarantees or subsidies from the federal government. SolarWorld employs more than 1,100 at its US headquarters and manufacturing plant in Hillsboro, Ore., and its commercial hub for the Americas in Camarillo, Calif.

The company is leading a group of seven domestic manufacturers, including SolarWorld, representing American manufacturers and employers in virtually all regions of the country.