Anti-dumping margins were set at 123.04 percent for Indian producers, 94.36 percent for Indonesian producers, and 65.43 percent for producers from Laos.
Countervailing duty rates ran higher. Indian producers were assigned 126.09 percent. Indonesian producers face rates between 73.2 percent and 173.7 percent. Lao producers were given rates between 82.03 percent and 153.67 percent.
The trade case was brought by the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade. Members include U.S. manufacturers First Solar, Hanwha Qcells, and Mission Solar Energy.
Friday’s final determinations “are an essential step toward enforcing our trade laws and restoring fair competition for U.S. solar manufacturers and the workers they employ,” Tim Brightbill, lead attorney for the Alliance, said in a statement. “We will keep monitoring import data and holding bad actors accountable wherever they move next.”
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is scheduled to make a final determination Oct. 14 on whether the imports materially injured or threatened to injure domestic manufacturers. If the commission votes in the affirmative, the Department of Commerce is expected to issue final duty orders in November.
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The United States first imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on Chinese solar products in 2012. Manufacturers there shifted production to other Asian countries.
In August 2023, the Department of Commerce found that certain Chinese solar producers shipped products through Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam for minor processing to circumvent tariffs that would apply to Chinese imports.
The department said companies there were receiving subsidies from the Chinese regime, and that those countervailing duty investigations were among the first in which it made an affirmative finding that companies received transnational subsidies.
William A. Reinsch, a former Clinton administration trade official and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, described the pattern as “a huge cat and mouse game.”
Minimum import prices in the proclamation are $21 per kilogram for polysilicon, $100 per kilogram for polysilicon ingots and wafers, 22 cents per watt for solar cells, and 38 cents per watt for solar modules.
“We’re setting prices so that the Chinese can’t dump anymore, and we’re setting tariffs to say build it here,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said after the signing.
America’s share of global polysilicon production capacity fell to less than 2 percent in 2024 from 50 percent in 2005, according to the proclamation. Global production has grown by more than 270 percent since 2020. Inventories reached a record 400,000 tons by the end of 2024.
Reuters contributed to this report.
