USITC recommends quotas and tarrifs

A long-awaited statement has been published by the United States International Trade Commision (USITC) on trade action on imports of solar PV cells and modules. The recommendations support the idea of import restriction, by a combination of tariffs or import licensing fee. Basically, the restrictions, both tariffs and quotas, are proposed by commissioners at a lower level than those, suggested by Suniva and SolarWorld. Also, USITC is recommending that Singapore and a number of other countries be exempt from any global trade action. Anyway, these are only recommendations. The final decision on the form of trade action will be in the hands of the Trump Administration. Trump himself has shown a preference for aggressive trade action even against the closest U.S. allies, and is reported to have called for his chief of staff to “bring me some tariffs”. This case is important also for the European PV market because many manufacturers will be affected by the situation in the US. Therefore, global PV modules supply can modify rapidly during the year 2018 and we can expect some changes in prices and availabilities of PV modules next year in Europe. We can predict the situation in the Europe better after definitive trade action will be announced by the U.S. government.