US solar firms call for more help against Chinese imports

US solar-energy manufacturers led by SolarWorld said they were forced to close plants and lay off workers because of unfair Chinese government policies, as they tried to persuade regulators that the US should continue to impose penalties on imports from the Asian nation.

Chinese exports of crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells and modules have flooded the global market, leading to a price collapse, Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld's US unit, said today at an International Trade Commission hearing in Washington.

"China's massive government-funded solar capacity has caused this material injury," Brinser said. "The import surge has been devastating to the US industry."

Representatives of Chinese manufacturers including Suntech Power and Trina Solar were scheduled to argue their case before the ITC later today.

The dispute has become a flashpoint in increasingly tense trade relations between China and the US, the world's largest economies, as American elections loom. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who face off in their first presidential debate tonight, have sparred over US enforcement of China's adherence to global trade rules. Members of Congress, looking to protect jobs in their districts, have also taken up the issue.

'Alarming rate'

"Chinese producers have continued to ship dumped and subsidized products into this country at an alarming and unacceptable rate," a group of 18 Democratic US House members led by Oregon Representatives Suzanne Bonamici and Kurt Schrader said yesterday in a letter to the ITC commissioners. "This is devastating to our domestic solar-manufacturing industry and costing us critical manufacturing jobs."

Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, as well as Charles Schumer of New York and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, all Democrats, sent the commission an identical letter.

Tom Gutierrez, the chief executive officer of Advanced Technologies Inc., a Merrimack, New Hampshire-based supplier of solar-manufacturing gear, mostly for China, said seeking tariffs against the Chinese is shortsighted and will end up costing the US jobs.

'Counterattack' Predicted

"The Chinese are going to counterattack," he said in an interview. "Prices are going to go up, installations are going to be less profitable for the installation companies," he said, predicting "significant loss of jobs."

The problem is with the ITC process, Gutierrez said. "Nowhere in their equation are they able to account for collateral damage."

The Commerce Department on May 17 announced preliminary duties ranging from 31 per cent to 250 per cent on imports of Chinese-made solar cells, after determining that the products were sold in the US below cost. The agency in March set separate tariffs as high as 4.73 per cent on the goods to counter suAir Zoom Pegasus 35