Tim Brightbill Discusses the Solar Industry Antidumping Case Against China with Washingtonian Magazine

October 31, 2011

Tim Brightbill, a partner in the International Trade Practice, was featured by Washingtonian magazine as part of its Legally Speaking series of interviews with high-profile DC-area attorneys. Mr. Brightbill spoke at length about the antidumping and countervailing duties cases he filed last week on behalf of the U.S. solar industry against Chinese manufacturers of solar cells and panels. The petitions are supported by the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing and senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (R-OR). The cases are among the largest of their type ever filed against China and are the largest in the renewable-energy industries.

"We've given the Commerce Department more than 2000 pages of evidence demonstrating that the Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the solar industry in China, and that those subsidies are injuring the competing U.S. industry as a result.," said Mr. Brightbill in the interview. "We have documented in our petition Chinese loans and loan guarantees of billions of dollars to single companies, and more than $40 billion to the Chinese industry as a whole. Moreover, the rules of international trade say that subsidies are illegal when they encourage exports, because that distorts the market, or when they injure a competing industry. The United States, when it provides incentives, is not encouraging US producers to injure other industries around the world. In contrast, China has an extremely small domestic solar market. More than 90 percent of China's production is exported, so those subsidies very quickly become injurious."