Almost 20 trade groups and a handful of companies disagreed on how to ensure supply chain resilience -- many arguing that liberalizing trade with allies is crucial to reduce the likelihood of shortages, or weaponization, but others asserted that friendshoring will undermine domestic production already under stress.
The official proclamation implementing an announcement in mid-May on changes to the 14.25% tariffs on imported solar panels and the tariff rate quotas on imported cells was issued by the White House on June 21.
The exclusion from solar safeguard tariffs for bifacial solar panels -- originally meant to help utility-scale installations -- is about to end, the Biden administration announced May 16.
Canadian Solar, which is ramping up a 5-gigawatt solar panel manufacturing factory in Texas, told the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative that tariff rate quotas on solar cells under the current safeguard action and Section 301 tariffs on machinery that helps make solar panels and cells are harming solar manufacturers. Canadian Solar also is working on opening a solar cell plant in Indiana, but it won't open until late 2025. It imports cells made in Thailand. The TRQ only allows five gigawatts' worth of tariff-free cells in annually.
Although all members of the House Ways and Means Committee supported a bill renewing the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, the bill proceeded to the House floor on a split bipartisan vote of 17-24 as Democrats unsuccessfully called to include an extension of the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers program, which lapsed in 2022.
The House Ways and Means Committee is set on April 17 to consider several just-introduced trade bills, including a retroactive extension of the Generalized System of Preferences benefits program, new restrictions on de minimis and restrictions on electric vehicle tax credits.
The International Trade Commission is beginning a Section 201 safeguard investigation on possible injury to domestic industry by imports of fine denier polyester staple fiber, it said in a notice released March 12.
Three domestic manufacturers filed a petition Feb. 28 asking the International Trade Commission to conduct a Section 201 safeguard investigation on imports of polyester staple fiber.
U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commissioner Kimberly Glas, calling e-commerce "a superhighway of the Wild West," asked witnesses at a hearing on Chinese exports and product safety if de minimis is a major contributor to unsafe products.
Allowing large numbers of electric vehicles from Chinese companies assembled in Mexico would be an "extinction event," warned the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit co-founded by large domestic manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union.