According to PV-magazine, Trump announced that the United States will impose tariffs on Chinese imports worth about $200 billion through Section 301, including inverters and non-lithium batteries.
The final order of the US trade representative includes a 10% temporary tariff rate starting on September 24 and will increase to 25% on January 1, 2019. In a conference call with reporters, senior government officials pointed out that the delay was for Let the companies that rely on these imports transfer the supply chain.
According to analysts at global consulting research firm GTM Research, more than 80% of residential inverters and more than 50% of industrial and commercial inverters in the US are imported from China. For inverter manufacturers supplying the US solar market, this kind of The transition is already underway. Sungrow can choose to ship its products from its 3 GW inverter plant in India, and Enphase, which relies on contract manufacturer Flex, is moving production to Mexico. However, since the plant is expected to be before the second quarter of 2019 No micro inverters will be produced, which means Enphase will bear import tariffs for up to 9 months.
Overall, since inverters account for a small portion of the overall project cost, it is expected that these tariffs will have a greater impact on the market share of each inverter supplier than the solar market.
