Commerce Preliminarily Finds Subsidies Benefit China Wind Tower Imports

摘要

The Commerce Department last week ruled preliminarily that utility wind towers shipped to the U.S. from China were being subsidized and should therefore be subject to countervailing duties (CVDs) ranging from 13.74 to 26 percent. The preliminary CVD rates announced May 30 were substantially higher than those assessed by Commerce in March against another set of clean-energy imports from China, crystalline silicone photovoltaic cells, which received preliminary CVD rates of 2.90 to 4.73 percent. In that case, Commerce earlier this month imposed significantly higher preliminary antidumping duties ranging from 31 to 250 percent. A trade remedy attorney predicted the high CVD preliminary margins in the wind tower case could portend extremely high preliminary antidumping (AD) margins. If wind tower preliminary AD margins are proportionately larger to the same degree as occurred in the solar case, those duties could be prohibitive against continued imports of utility wind towers from China, he said. Such a result, he predicted, could severely impact the wind turbine industry in the coastal U.S., which he said largely imports towers from China.