The Dept. of Commerce was scheduled to release its preliminary antidumping/countervailing duty (AD/CVD) tariff amounts for Indian, Indonesian and Laotian solar cell and panel imports before the end of 2025. The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) determined in August that the U.S. industry has been materially injured by imports from the three countries, and Commerce was to announce its tariff amounts by December. But the 43-day government shutdown in October and November pushed back investigation timelines.
Now the original petitioner for the AD/CVD investigation, the Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade, is asking the Dept. of Commerce to postpone its preliminary AD determination even further — by another 50 days. The Alliance, represented by Tim Brightbill and Wiley Rein LLP, said the extension is necessary because “these investigations cover solar cells and modules from multiple countries, and thus require a significant amount of resources to fully investigate. Second, there are still numerous outstanding supplemental questionnaires, and the department will likely need to issue additional rounds of questionnaires prior to making its preliminary determination.”
This could push the preliminary AD determination release to April 21, 2026. There doesn’t appear to be an extension asked for the CVD determination, and that may still be released around Feb. 20.
American panel manufacturers first requested the investigation in July 2025, alleging that solar panel manufacturers had relocated their operations to India, Indonesia and Laos to avoid tariffs placed on imports from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. While cell and panel imports from India have been relatively steady over the last two years, the data shows that imports from Indonesia and Laos have increased a great deal since 2024.
Once the ITC determined that U.S. solar panel manufacturers were being harmed by imports from India, Indonesia and Laos, the Dept. of Commerce began its own investigation to determine tariff amounts in response.
Critical circumstances allegation
The Alliance, which includes First Solar, Mission Solar, Qcells and Talon PV, escalated efforts on Jan. 26 when filing a “critical circumstances” allegation with the Sec. of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
The document says that imports from India, Indonesia and Laos have surged, activity that “strongly indicates that these imports are being rushed into the United States in an effort to avoid the imposition of antidumping and countervailing duties.” A significant jump in both panel and cell imports from Indonesia can be seen in the above graphs.
The Alliance is asking the Dept. of Commerce to expedite a critical-circumstances decision as soon as possible and “certainly” by the preliminary CVD determination date of Feb. 20. A critical-circumstances determination would impose duties retroactively on imports entered up to 90 days before the tariffs are announced. That could put retroactive tariffs on the 2.4 GW of solar panels and 1.4 GW of cells from Indonesia that entered the United States in November 2025, in addition to the solar imports from India and Laos.
During the 2024 AD/CVD investigation into solar imports from Southeast Asia, the Alliance also filed a critical circumstances allegation after seeing an increase in imports from Vietnam and Thailand. Commerce agreed with the Alliance then and ordered retroactive duties on all cells and panels imported from Vietnam and Thailand (except from JA Solar and JinkoSolar).
The solar industry should have a clearer picture on the tariffs for solar imports from India, Indonesia and Laos in the next few months.
