Last week, the U.S. Trade Representative's Office announced details of President Trump's PV tariff protection trade, which will impose additional import tariffs on photovoltaic cells and components in most countries around the world. The unregulated 'free world' leader Announced that it will amend the 3712 page "U.S. Customs Tariff Code" to unilaterally exercise his "defense" rights.
Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg, recently commented on social media: "The Trump team plans to impose punitive tariffs on imported solar panels, which can be harmful to employment in the United States while increasing residents' Of the electricity bills and damage to the environment and public health.This thing is not correct, and can not stop the clean energy development process.
Bloomberg New Energy Financial analysts delved into the documents issued by the Trump administration and identified five possible solutions or avoided or mitigated the widespread effects of the tariff adjustment on the PV industry.
Instead, film products
Currently, about 4 GW of financeable thin film modules worldwide are produced by First Solar and Solar Frontier with about 3.2GW of unobtrusive quality, these films are not subject to tariff adjustments and are therefore priced higher than imported crystalline silicon modules 10 cents / watt.
Procurement from 'developing' countries
In order to prevent the World Trade Organization (WTO) to take 'retaliatory measures', Trump exempted some of the WTO member states' punitive tariffs of developing countries, including the exempted countries including India, Turkey, South Africa and Brazil have been There are PV equipment manufacturing countries. These 'exempt countries' have a component capacity of 10.4GW and a battery capacity of 3.8GW or can be used in the US market.
Imported components using the United States 'battery'
According to the appendix, the Trump administration may allow imported wafers to be first processed to become US-made batteries and then assembled into final components in another country. According to this interpretation, the import components using US batteries are available at Re-import back to the United States is exempt from this part of the tariff, which can save 5 cents / watt costs (2019 standard).
Making money, making money from project development
Some manufacturers that hold US PV projects can sell components at their own PV plants at low prices, avoid punitive tariffs to the maximum extent possible, and then profit from project development.
Imported 'consumer' products for modification
Import basic electronic equipment and upgrade it to a component after it enters the United States to take advantage of the exemption from punitive tariffs on consumer products using photovoltaic modules.
