Driven by the generous tax incentives of the Inflation Reduction Act, solar power plants in the United States are thriving. But before the new production lines for domestic photovoltaic manufacturing in the United States were fully operational, domestic solar installers still heavily relied on foreign-made components.

According to Panjiva, the supply chain research department of Standard&Poor's Global Market Intelligence (S&P), the import volume of photovoltaic modules in the United States surged by 90.5% in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same period last year, reaching 50409 sea freight containers with 20 foot equivalent units.

The import volume reached a new high, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of growth in import volume since President Biden waived tariffs on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and modules from Southeast Asia in June 2022. It is said that these batteries and components have been accused of evading ten years of tariffs on China.

The US Department of Commerce is expected to make a final decision in August on whether manufacturers will use Chinese made components to assemble products in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam to avoid anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed by the Obama administration in 2012. A preliminary ruling in December 2022 found that some imported products from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam had evaded tariffs.

Quarterly imports of solar modules in the United States

According to Panjiva data, First Solar Vietnam Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of First Solar, a thin-film photovoltaic manufacturer based in Arizona, USA, was the largest single solar exporter to the United States in the second quarter of 2023, followed closely by Trina Solar Energy Development Company, a subsidiary of China Trina Solar Corporation in Singapore.

The third is Boviet Solar Technology Company registered in Vietnam, which is a subsidiary of Boviet Group registered in Vietnam and has its headquarters in China.

However, according to Market Intelligence global trade analysis data, if measured by component capacity rather than sea freight containers, the import volume of solar modules from the United States in the second quarter of 2023 decreased by nearly 11% month on month to 11.6GW, compared to 13GW in the first quarter of this year.

The same point is that in the second quarter of 2023, Vietnam accounted for the highest proportion of photovoltaic module imports in the United States, reaching 31.2%, followed by Thailand at 22.5%, Cambodia at 13.7%, and Malaysia at 12.9%.

The four Southeast Asian countries together accounted for 80.3% of the imports of solar modules from the United States during the same period. US Department of Commerce final ruling: 5 photovoltaic companies evade tariffs!

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Component imports from the United States in the second quarter of 2023

In the first half of 2023, the total import volume of solar modules was 24.6GW, and S&P Global predicts that the installed solar capacity in the United States will approach 36GW this year. According to the domestic production capacity announcement tracked by Commodity Insights, by the end of 2023, the solar module production capacity in the United States will reach 25.7GW, up from 14.4GW at the end of 2022.

The American Solar Industry Association stated on August 14th that since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the private sector has pledged to invest