BY SUDARSHAN VARADHAN
SINGAPORE—Solar panel makers in Laos and Indonesia, mostly owned by Chinese firms, boosted their share in the US market after steep tariffs hit exports from other Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia and Thailand, trade data showed.
The US government finalized steep levies on imports of solar cells and modules from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia in April, following two rounds of tariffs in June and November last year, to prevent dumping by mostly Chinese-owned factories in these countries.
However, Chinese companies have moved their production to Indonesia and Laos and boosted exports to the United States, Reuters reporting showed.
The combined share for Indonesia and Laos in the US solar modules market rose to 29 percent in the three months after the second round of US duties were imposed on neighboring producers in late November, from less than 1 percent in 2023, a Reuters review of US trade data showed.
Analysts and industry experts say the southeast Asian capacities owned by Chinese companies were almost exclusively set up to sidestep tariffs and supply the US markets at premiums to global prices, exposing the limits of Washington’s trade interventions.
Yana Hryshko, head of global solar supply chain research at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said all solar manufacturing capacity in the four Southeast Asian countries hit with high tariffs would now likely “be shut down or reduced dramatically”.
Solar panel exports from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Cambodia to the US fell by 33 percent on an annual basis in the nine months since the first round of tariffs in June. In the same period, exports from regional neighbors Indonesia and Laos grew around eight-fold, the trade data showed.
