The U.S. federal government, which was fighting a U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruling requiring Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to retroactively collect two years of tariffs on imported solar panels, filed a motion last week to dismiss its appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals today granted the dismissal.
This now leaves only trade associations, panel companies and U.S. developers still appealing the ruling. Defendants still listed on the appeal include American Clean Power Association, Solar Energy Industries Association, Boviet Solar, BYD, Canadian Solar, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Risen Solar, Trina Solar, Invenergry and NextEra Energy. With the government removing itself as a defendant, each company remaining will now “bear its own costs.”
In August 2025, the CIT ruled that President Joe Biden’s two-year tariff pause on imported solar panels was illegal, and retroactive duties should be collected on Southeast Asian solar cells and panels imported between April 2022 and June 2024.
The case was brought to the CIT by Auxin Solar, a small solar panel assembler in California, which claimed the president’s June 2022 executive order was “an abuse of discretion.” Biden ordered the two-year pause on duty collection to ensure a sufficient supply of solar panels was entering the country to meet domestic electricity generation needs. When the Dept. of Commerce began investigating whether Chinese solar panel manufacturers were working in Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to circumvent existing antidumping/countervailing duties (AD/CVD) in 2022, supply from the popular import area effectively stopped. The tariff pause allowed panels to continue to be imported between April 1, 2022, and June 6, 2024, without threat of extra taxes.
When the CIT ordered that tariffs should have been collected during that two-year period, CBP was required to go back and collect duties on Southeast Asian solar panel imports. Duty collection was quickly delayed untiled a “final and conclusive judgment and the conclusion of all applicable appeals” is reached. The companies still involved in the appeal now have until March 12 to file their opening briefs.
During the 2025 CIT case, the Dept. of Justice stated there had been approximately 44,000 imported solar products between April 2022 and June 2024. It also estimated that U.S. importers brought in roughly 88.2 GW of solar cells and panels from the four affected countries during that time frame, which could result in over $50 billion in retroactive duties.
Once the defendants file their appeal briefs in mid-March, Auxin will have 40 days to file its response. A hearing on the case would then come later in the year.
