Washington. America is now eyeing the solar panels installed on your roof. This is being said because it has banned such electronic devices made in India. It has also imposed a similar ban on China. In fact, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has stopped the shipment of electronic devices worth about $ 43 million from India from October 2023 under the 2022 law banning goods made with forced labor. Reuters has given this information.
This US ban indicates that the country’s Trade Enforcement Agency’s focus is now elsewhere. However, CBP has not clarified what type of electronic equipment it has seized. According to industry sources, the shipment that has been stopped contains polysilicon, the raw material used in solar panels, and solar panels in the highest quantity. When the agency asked CBP about this, they did not respond immediately. This law also bans goods made in China’s Xinjiang region.
Xinjiang is believed to be the place where Chinese authorities have set up labour camps for ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim groups. However, China has always denied any violence against the Uighur community. No Indian electronics shipments have been seized under the Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) in previous years.
According to CBP, nearly a third of the Indian electronics shipments seized were rejected, while only 5.4% of shipments from Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand, the top solar component suppliers to the US, were denied entry during the same period.
The detentions of Indian equipment are a small fraction of the $3 billion in electronics shipments stopped by CBP at the border under the UFLPA over the past two years. But they are a blow to Indian producers, who have sought to position themselves as an alternative to U.S. solar project developers hit by tariffs and UFLPA enforcement on panels made mainly by Chinese companies.
Tags: China, Solar System, united states
FIRST PUBLISHED : August 27, 2024, 22:30 IST
