House Votes to Repeal Biden Tariff Relief on Solar Panel Parts Imports
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to repeal a rule introduced by President Biden allowing the duty free import of solar panel components from Southeast Asia, aimed at enabling domestic solar manufacturers to ramp production to meet growing clean energy demand.
President Biden has pledged to veto the resolution if it were to pass in Congress.
The vote follows a series of moves announced last year by the Biden administration aimed at ensuring the continued production and deployment of solar panels in the U.S., and to spur the development of long-term domestic solar manufacturing capacity. These actions included suspending the collection of tariffs for two years on imports of solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, in order to resolve one of the key near-term issues threatening to disrupt the continued growth of solar panel deployment, following a Commerce Department investigation into whether China was routing products illegally through these countries, that may have resulted in the imposition of tariffs.
The Southeast Asian countries currently account for roughly three quarters of imported solar modules, making up the vast majority of solar module installations in the U.S.
