US wins solar case over India at WTO

The United States again won a challenge at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to India’s policy requiring makers of solar-power products to use domestic content.

The WTO Appellate Body upheld a February decision that said local content requirements discriminate against U.S. companies and other foreign countries. 

{mosads}”This report is a clear victory for American solar manufacturers and workers, and another step forward in the fight against climate change,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement after the ruling was announced on Friday.

“Local content requirements are not only contrary to WTO rules, but actually undermine our efforts to promote clean energy by requiring the use of more expensive and less efficient equipment, making it more difficult for clean energy sources to be cost-competitive,” Froman said.

Since India implemented the requirements in 2011, U.S. solar exports have fallen by more than 90 percent, USTR said. 

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said the win “highlights how America wins when we strongly enforce our trade agreements and hold our trading partners accountable when they break the rules and seek to gain an unfair advantage over American manufacturers.”

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) urged India to quickly to dismantle its domestic content requirements they argue have blocked access for U.S. solar cell modules.

“As each and every previous ruling in this case has shown, India’s domestic content requirements are a clear violation of core WTO rules and today’s victory will give an important boost to U.S. manufacturing,” said Linda Dempsey, NAM’s vice president of international economic affairs, in a statement. 

By contrast, the Sierra Club argued that both countries need to drop their cases because they are hurting efforts to ramp up clean energy and tackle climate change.

On Monday, India filed a new dispute against the United States at the WTO challenging domestic content requirements and subsidies in renewable energy programs across eight states — Washington, California, Montana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware and Minnesota — they say are getting favorable treatment compared with imported products.