Obama to back U.S. solar panel producers against China

Obama is expected to back U.S. solar panel producers on against lower-priced imports from China.

"I don't want to see wind turbines and solar panels and high-tech batteries made in other countries by other workers. I want to make them here," Obama said last week.

 A coalition of seven U.S. manufacturers has asked for duties topping 100 percent on Chinese-made solar cells and panels, which they say are subsidized by the Chinese government and "dumped" in the United States at unfairly low prices.

The case, which was filed last year, has created more friction in the U.S.-China trade relationship, already strained by clashes over Beijing's currency policies and U.S. duties on a number of other Chinese goods.

China's biggest solar manufacturers, which include Suntech Power Holdings Co, Trina Solar, and JA Solar Holdings, generate more than 20 percent of their annual sales in the United States, making it the second-largest market for them after Europe. They are already moving to shift some of their production out of China to dodge additional U.S. tariffs.

"We're already dependent on the Middle East for our oil. We cannot become dependent on the Far East for our renewable energy," said Gordon Brinser, president of SolarWorld Industries America, which heads the coalition and the U.S. arm of one of Germany's largest solar manufacturers, SolarWorld AG. The group appears to have found a sympathetic ear in Obama.

The U.S. Commerce Department will announce preliminary countervailing or anti-subsidy duties late March and preliminary anti-dumping duties in mid-May. A final decision on both is expected in the third or fourth quarter of the year.

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