Australia imposing AD duties?

Australia has once again restarted investigations into dumping of Chinese solar panels into the Australian solar market, due to a complaint received by a small insignificant solar panel maker Tindo Solar. Note this investigation had been terminated last year by the Australian government but due to an appeal, the whole process is going to start again. It makes sense for a country with a big manufacturing industry to investigate dumping by foreign players into the domestic market. But neither does Australia has an existent manufacturing industry, nor does the government have any strategic plans to start a major cluster. The country does not manufacture any major raw materials or components such as polysilicon or solar wafers. All it does is some small time cell processing and mostly assembly of solar panels. These small players do not have the scale or capability of servicing the Australian solar panel demand.

Besides Chinese solar panels with their low costs have revolutionized the whole solar industry making it competitive with other fossil fuel sources, such that solar energy is now servicing 18% of Australian households. Solar electricity is competing directly with major utilities in supplying the power needs of households. This stupid investigation is not going to help anybody except maybe a small player here or there. In case the Australian government does impose these duties, it will raise prices for every solar user and make it less competitive to fossil fuels like coal and gas which get billions of dollars in subsidies. Australia has got one of the highest per capita emissions of GHG in the world more than tons per year. Instead of fighting climate change actively, the government will be taking a backward step by indirectly raising the cost of installing and using solar power.

It might make sense for countries with large manufacturing bases to impose anti-dumping duties such as USA and Europe. Even in their case, the domestic industry has not really benefited from these CVD and ADD duties. Chinese and foreign solar panels still dominate the industry in those regions. India made a very smart decision of not imposing anti-dumping duties, despite its DGAD government department ruling for imposing these duties. The government knew that imposing duties would raise the prices of solar power and would really not help the economy much. Instead it stopped the duties and is giving preferential procurement to domestically made solar cells and panels in government and government owned companies tenders. This is a very small part and has not hindered the price decline of solar power, which have touched all-time lows in recent months. Both the Indian manufacturers and consumers are in a win-win situation because of the smart government policy.