So much for “Make in America”

Solarworld has been at the forefront of the fight against the import of cheap Chinese solar cells and panels into Europe and USA. While the company has benefited from the imposition of duties, it has led to the elimination of hundreds of jobs across all countries, besides raising the cost of solar energy. It has also led other countries to think of imposing ADD and CVD on imports of solar panels. Ironically, India is now thinking of putting an ADD on imports of USA solar panels and it will be well justified to do this, given USA precedence.

The only winners of these trade wars have been Chinese solar companies, which have continued to find loopholes and get around these restrictions. Now Solarworld has got another USA company SolarCity in its crosshairs. During the last 2-3 years, Solarcity had become the largest solar rooftop installer in USA showing exponential growth. Given its success, the company had diversified into upstream solar manufacturing by buying a solar panel startup based in USA – Silveo. This company had an innovative technology to increase the efficiency of solar panels, while keeping the costs low. The company would add more layers of amorphous thin film technology on a normal crystalline silicon substrate. This would allow the company to increase the efficiency. Solarcity bought this company and invested to open a massive 1000 MW solar panel making plant, in the state of New York. This would increase the total USA manufacturing capacity by more than 25% at one go.

Note most panel makers had abandoned USA manufacturing, either by shutting down or moving to low cost locations such as Malaysia and China. SolarCity was going to be the first major solar panel manufacturing developer in a long time. Now even this company has come in the crosshairs of the Solarworld case. A US government department has ruled that the silicon substrate solar panels which SolarCity would import from China would also be a party to the same case, as the import of plain vanilla solar cells and panels. Solarcity had argued that it would be transforming the panel and would use the silicon substrate as a raw material only. However, it has got overruled during a preliminary ruling.

Solar trade wars through legal cases are a blunt instrument which leads to injuries of the innocent, while the accused gets away through legal loopholes. Chinese solar panels form a majority of the solar panels being used in the USA. Even USA companies such as First Solar and Sunpower do not make their panels in America, but in Phillipines and Malaysia. The government officials in USA are quite dumb to get a European company involved in such a stupid trade war, which is not only hurting the country and its citizens but also the companies it was meant to protect.