In the most recent shot fired in the trade war over solar panels between the United States and China, last week solar panel manufacturer Energy Conversion Devices, through its liquidating trust filed an antitrust lawsuit against Chinese companies Trina Solar Limited, Yingli Green Energy Holding Company Limited, Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd., and their U.S. affiliates, seeking over $950,000,000 in damages.
The case filed on October 4, 2013 by liquidating trustee, John Madden, in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan, claims the object of the Chinese companies’ illegal actions was to drive established solar industry leader Energy Conversion Devices out of business.
Energy Conversion Devices alleges that the Chinese companies agreed they would drive American solar panel producers from the market. As specifically alleged in the complaint, the Chinese companies, in furtherance of their scheme, agreed to fix prices, and coordinated a plan to “dump” inferior solar panels in the American market at unreasonably low and below-cost prices.
Before the Energy Conversion Devices bankruptcy, it was a major player in the commercial and industrial rooftop solar market, achieving over $1 billion in sales employing more than 2,500 people before February 2012 when the company sought bankruptcy protection and ultimately was forced to liquidate. The complaint charges that the Chinese companies flooded the American market with their inferior flat photovoltaic panels, weakening Energy Conversion Device’s position until it was ultimately eliminated entirely and also eliminating almost the entire American solar panel manufacturing industry.
The efforts to eliminate America’s solar industry, however, have not gone unnoticed by the U.S. Government. The Department of Commerce has already determined that Chinese companies, including these defendants dumped solar panels in the American market at less than fair value such that it was necessary to impose massive import duties of as much as 46% in an attempt to even the playing field for the few remaining American solar panel manufacturers that have not already been driven out of business.
No doubt, these governmental determinations are of little comfort to former owners and employees of Energy Conversion Devices, whose only hope of redress at this point is this lawsuit. Energy Conversion Devices seeks compensation for the loss of the more than $950,000,000, the book value of the business the Chinese destroyed.
However the litigation ultimately resolves, the American photovoltaic manufacturing industry will never be the same.
Article by Stuart Kaplow, appearing courtesy Green Building Law Update.
3 comments
Those of us disabled Vietnam vets, that live in our self built “Hovels” miles from power lines on land that we bought and finally paid for out on remote land in the sticks RELY on those “Cheap inferior Chinese flat panels”. We could never HOPE to afford those Mega-Buck American, and German panels, so we generate ALL of our power from the Chinese panels. My Chinese built, Harbor Freight bought panels power this entire self built home, and have been doing so FLAWLESSLY since 2003 for the oldest ones. Perhaps the non Chinese should NOT have gotten greedy, and built some panels that poor Americans could AFFORD.
Bankruptcy between the United States and China is a big issue, the objective of this blog is to show what happened after the trade war.
[…] had written in a blog post last October, Bankruptcy Trustee Sues Chinese Over Solar Panel Dumping, about a case filed in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan, claiming the object of […]
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