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AUXIN CEO SPEAKS: A small California-based photovoltaic module manufacturer turned the world of solar energy upside down last year when it filed, and the Commerce Department took on, a petition asking the department to investigate whether competitor imports from Asia are skirting tariffs on Chinese products.
Auxin Solar’s petition stuck after Commerce declined to act on an earlier petition from an anonymous group of domestic manufacturers to investigate the same allegations of circumvention, and it drove an intense lobbying campaign from elements of the solar sector seeking to protect imports.
Mamun Rashid, CEO of the small solar panel maker, said his company and the broader domestic manufacturing sector need antidumping duties to be expanded to make the game fair.
A must for growth: “If we have product coming in that’s not fairly priced as we’re trying to grow our businesses, then we’ll never grow our businesses because we won’t get the sales,” he told the Washington Examiner’s Katherine Doyle.
Backers of Commerce’s investigation, which led to its determination in December that Chinese-based manufacturers operating in Cambodia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia are circumventing antidumping duties on China, have felt vindicated by the findings.
“We’re not saying slow down and wait for the Americans to fire up the plants and then resume a deployment. Not saying that at all. We’re just saying level the playing field,” he said. “I should not be asked to compete with slave labor, and I should not be asked to compete with other governments that illegally subsidize or companies that participate in cheating our circumventing trade laws.”
Why Auxin: Commerce in November 2021 rejected a petition for an anticircumvention investigation from an anonymous group of solar manufacturers. The department said petitioners failed to meet threshold requirements and rejected its claim that petitioners must remain anonymous to avoid retaliation.
Auxin later put its name on the board, which ultimately led to Commerce’s circumvention determination.
“We put our neck out there. Many other companies are benefiting from our action. We have the opposite effect,” Rashid said.
Auxin, compared to its competitors operating in the U.S. that may have international parents, had a special interest in seeing the antidumping duties expanded, he said.
“A lot of these other companies are international companies, they see a business opportunity so they’ve set up shop here, and as a result, they have a lot of fear of retaliation from the Chinese. And that’s why they’re afraid to speak up,” he said. “We’re afraid, too, and we’ve been retaliated against also, but the history of Auxin Solar — Auxin Solar was created with a single purpose, domestic manufacturing, there was no other purpose.”
The other side: President Joe Biden sided with solar interests opposed to tariffs with his solar emergency protecting imports targeted in Auxin’s petition from tariffs through next year.
The Solar Energy Industries Association, with support from a number of Democrats in the Senate, argued strongly against tariff expansion and argued that tariffs haven’t helped expand domestic manufacturing.
The debate came to a head this morning with passage of a resolution to cancel Biden’s solar emergency, something SEIA estimates would destroy jobs supporting solar installations by requiring importers to pay retroactive duties totaling $1 billion.
More on that below.
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WAYS AND MEANS PASSES MEASURE TO CANCEL SOLAR EMERGENCY: The House Ways and Means Committee advanced the bipartisan Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval this morning that aims to cancel Biden’s emergency proclamation protecting solar product imports from tariffs through next summer.
Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama was the lone Democrat to join Republicans in support of the resolution. Several Democratic members who support the resolution, including co-sponsor Dan Kildee and Reps. Bill Pascrell and Lloyd Doggett, were not present to vote.
The politics: The resolution is “simply about enforcement” of existing trade law, Sewell said, noting her disagreement with Biden about the “bridge” he offered the industry with his tariff moratorium.
Other Democrats opposed the resolution on the grounds that it would constrain deployment of solar energy technologies and choke the effects of the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax incentives for renewable energy.
From the outside: Results of a new Morning Consult poll published yesterday by the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a group representing domestic manufacturing interests, showed that 62% of likely voters are at least somewhat supportive of nixing the solar emergency declaration.
SEIA, which had pressed lawmakers to vote against the resolution, said the resolution would further undermine certainty in the solar sector.
WOTUS SURVIVES HOUSE VETO OVERRIDE ATTEMPT: The House voted without success yesterday to override Biden’s veto of the resolution the chamber passed to cancel EPA’s Waters of the United States rule. The vote fell short of its required two-third majority.
But the rule faces trouble elsewhere after being blocked by two federal judges. Most recently, a federal judge in North Dakota blocked enforcement of WOTUS in 24 states that challenged the legality of the rule.
Weeks before, a federal judge in Texas blocked the rule from going into force in that state and in Idaho.
MANCHIN SCHEDULES HEARINGS ON PERMITTING REFORM: Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Joe Manchin announced two new oversight hearings to be held next month to take up the issue of permitting reform, one of which will include the four sitting FERC commissioners.
Manchin’s announcement also said the two previously scheduled hearings on the White House’s FY2024 budget request, on the calendar tomorrow and next Thursday and featuring Secretaries Jennifer Granholm and Deb Haaland, will “share a common focus on the urgent need for comprehensive energy permitting reform, energy security and fiscal responsibility.”
Manchin told a crowd at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce HQ in Washington that he is bringing back his permitting reform legislation from the previous Congress, which received some but not sufficient bipartisan support.
NEW JERSEY HALTS ELECTRIC VEHICLE REBATES BECAUSE OF SOARING DEMAND: New Jersey officials announced a temporary suspension of its EV tax rebate program this week, saying the “Charge Up New Jersey” program has become so popular with consumers that its funds have nearly dried up.
The program, now in its third year, gives consumers $4,000 in tax rebates for purchasing or leasing an EV.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities said the state has already dispensed an estimated $35 million in funds from the program this fiscal year.
EVs made up 8% of new cars sold in the state last year, and by the end of 2022, the state had 91,000 EVs on the road. That outpaces the average growth rate in the U.S., where EVs made up 5.7% of all new cars sold.
BERKELEY RULING THREATENS GAS STOVE BANS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY: The Ninth Circuit Court’s decision to overturn the Berkeley gas stove ban this week could threaten dozens of similar restrictions being advanced across the U.S. — including those that fall far outside the appellate court’s West Coast jurisdiction.
The court’s 3-0 decision hinged on its reading of the Energy and Conservation Act of 1975, which gives DOE the legal right to set conservation standards for certain building appliances, including hot water heaters, furnaces, and HVAC systems — and preempts local laws in those areas. The California Restaurant Association, which filed the lawsuit, argued the city’s law ran afoul of that act.
Now, the court decision puts into doubt scores of similar bans advanced in more than 100 U.S. cities and localities, including 75 in California alone.
Although Monday’s ruling only technically applies to states that fall under the Ninth Circuit jurisdiction—California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, as well as Guam and the Mariana Islands– it does set the stage for a challenge to regulations in other states.
Even if bans are upheld by courts, any such ruling would create a split between circuits, raising the prospect of the Supreme Court weighing in for the whole country.
The appellate court decision may have “ripple effects” for gas appliance restrictions nationwide and provide a roadmap of sorts for industry and consumer groups looking to halt such policies, Rob Rains, a senior vice president at the independent research firm Washington Analysis, said in an interview.
“The faster that you have these potentially split decisions about these types of policies in different circuit courts, it creates a ripeness, which could make it more attractive for the Supreme Court to potentially take up this issue,” he told Breanne. Read more here.
CAMPAIGN TRAIL WATCH: Former vice president and likely 2024 candidate Mike Pence will deliver closing remarks on U.S. energy policy this afternoon at the Nixon National Energy Conference in Yorba Linda, California.
Republicans have embraced energy policy to go after Biden for high prices and to criticize him as failing to do more to increase U.S. energy independence, especially in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He could also offer thoughts on the H.R. 1, the sprawling energy bill House Republicans passed last month… Catch a live-stream of his remarks here.
The Rundown
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