Duties announced on Chinese PV

[ktech]

Just had an email announcing 11.8% duty imposed from 6th Jun with a rise to 46.7% on 6th August. Will this really effect prices or have importers already covered this?

 

[solarfred]

There is still a consultation going on to decide if the duty should be permanent or not. It will be decided within 60 days but in effect the current temporary duty has had the desired effect in putting many producers out of business and totally shutting down any imports from China thus forcing prices up anyway. If the duty is imposed for 5 years then producers will move there point of export out of China which will add to costs but will not make any difference to the production costs. End result is the EU will have totally p****d off the Chinese which will have detrimental effect on future trade opportunities and ensured the cost of installing PV will increase while the financial benefits continue to fall. There was a chance of grid parity becoming a reality but not if duties are retroactively imposed to keep the price of PV artificially high. I assume the energy companies are quite comfortable with the situation.

 

[SibertSolar]

"I assume the energy companies are quite comfortable with the situation." - no doubt!

 

[stuartcourt]

problem with China is cheap ****, most people would rather take a chance on an item that is less than half price knowing its poor quality but in the hope it will be ok. The stuff is cheap because of slave labour and our business can not compete because of minimum wage, health and safety and quality laws etc. A tax on imports good idea but as said will only be one winner and wont be us.

 

[balbecdaze]

And China's response here. France makes a lot of money selling wine in China apparently.

 

[Worcester]

And China is the largest single market for Rolls Royce (More than the rest of the world put together and remember they're German [BMW]) Bentleys, Mercedes, BMW's and massive amounts of German manufacturing machinery.

The EU might just have shot itself in the foot.

 

[Gavin A]

typical, 30 years trying to improve free trade conditions and get away from trade wars, and solar PV ends up being the first shot in a major EU China trade war.

Someone needs to remove that trade commissioner from office before he makes things any worse.

 

[Worcester]

However - he may not be able to enforce the duties going forward .....

"Under EU law, the commission is given powers to impose provisional duties, even against the wishes of member states. Final duties, however, require approval. Without showing he has the political authority from member states to see through the threat of duties when the commission investigation concludes in December, Mr De Gucht may struggle to win a settlement offer from China."

 

[Gavin A]

yeah, unfortunately he can still raise the duties up to the 40-60% range from August through to december if he wants, then it's up to the nation states to vote to keep the measures for the next 5 years, or abandon them entirely.

I have a horrible suspicion the guy is going to push through the higher rates in August, then the countries will vote to abandon them in december... unless the EU manufacturers manage to convince their countries to vote in favour of keeping the measure if they've seen a big upsurge in orders... at which point we're damned if we do, damned if we don't as our only hope of dumping the tarrifs would be if we could show that the bottom had fallen out of the installation market in that period, but obviously that would mean that we'd all have had to endure 4 months of reduced sales and uncertainty again.

The worst part of that I think is going to be persuading people to buy a system during that period when there's a chance that the tariff will be dropped in a few months and the panel prices might then drop by 40% (I know in reality the prices won't rise by 40%, more like 10-20% as the manufacturers will take a hit on it, but that'll be the perception).

So it could be like a self fulfilling prophecy that the bottom will fall out of the market in the autumn because customers hold off to wait and see if the tariff gets dumped in dec.

Best case probably would be that either we get a negotiated settlement, or stick with the current import tariff.

The problem could be that the chinese companies will do the same analysis I've just done, and work out that they only need to ride out the tariffs for a few months, wait for the market in europe to implode for those months, then laugh as the EU member countries tell the commissioner to abandon the tariffs in dec.

Best solution all round would be for the commissioner to end up being forced out of his job one way or another...

 

[Energetic]

Absolutely bonkers. Just weight the Feed In Tariff in favour of EU manufactured products. And make Gavin EU trade commissioner...

 

[solarfred]

And if we weren't in the EU............