By Nichola Groom

LOS ANGELES- The US Commerce Department on Tuesday announced anti-subsidy countervailing duties on solar cells imported by companies in Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand that were lower than some expected for several major Chinese producers.

The announcement is the first of two preliminary decisions expected by the Commerce Department this year in a trade case brought by South Korea’s Hanwha Qcells Arizona-based First Solar and several smaller companies seeking to protect billions of dollars in investments in US solar manufacturing.

The group, called the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee, accused Chinese companies with factories in the four Southeast Asian countries of flooding the US market with panels priced below their cost of production and of receiving unfair subsidies that make American products uncompetitive.

Others in the solar industry say those low-priced imports are critical for both clean-energy project developers competing with fossil fuels and for domestic solar factories that use overseas-made cells in panels assembled on US soil.

According to a fact sheet posted on the Commerce Department’s website, the agency calculated general subsidy rates of 9.13 percent for imports from Malaysia, 8.25 percent for imports from Cambodia, 23.06 percent for imports from Thailand and 2.85 percent for imports from Vietnam.

Overall, the rates were lower than expected, according to Roth Capital Partners solar industry analyst Philip Shen, who said in a client note that he had been expecting duties of around 15 percent.

Large manufacturers have their own separate duty rates, and several big China-based producers received far lower rates than Hanwha Qcells, a global producer that brought the trade case to protect its large investment in US solar factories in Georgia. – Reuters