The trade case, filed at the Commerce Department, seeks tariffs of more than 100 percent of the wholesale import price of solar panels from China. Imports of Chinese solar panels to the United States totaled $1.6 billion in the first eight months of this year.

The filing, which the Commerce Department has no choice but to review, under federal rules, comes as anti-China sentiments are running high in some Washington corridors.

The Senate recently passed a bill that would require the Treasury Department to order the Commerce Department to impose tough tariffs on certain Chinese goods, if Treasury found that China was improperly valuing its currency to gain an economic advantage. So far, Republicans have declined to bring the House version up for a vote.

Chinese commerce officials had no immediate comment about the solar panel filing, but have long vehemently opposed such trade cases. The matter will probably be controversial within the United States, too. For one thing, if successful it would drive up the cost of solar energy in the name of keeping the American industry competitive.

The case also coincides with criticism by Congressional Republicans of the Obama administration’s efforts to support American clean energy companies. Republicans argue that federal loan guarantees of more than a half-billion dollars to the now-bankrupt solar company Solyndra show the folly of the administration’s trying to guide industrial policy in clean energy.

But two Democratic senators on Wednesday supported the trade case. “American solar operations should be rapidly expanding to keep pace with the skyrocketing demand for these products,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who appeared at a Washington news conference on the case held by an Oregon solar panel maker, Solar World Industries America.

“But that is not what has been happening,” Mr. Wyden said. “There seems to be one primary explanation for this; that is, that China is cheating.” He was joined by his Oregon colleague Senator Jeff Merkley, who said China was engaging in “rogue practices.”

Whatever the partisan positioning, though, the trade case would procedurally begin above the political fray. It will follow a quasi-judicial path at the Commerce Department and a related American agency, the International Trade Commission, that is designed to operate without political partisanship influence. Congress created the apolitical process for trade cases during the cold war, because of a perception that Democratic and Republican administrations had tolerated subsidies and dumping by many countries as long as they were American allies against the Soviet Union.

Other recent industry cases against China that have followed this process include one filed in late March, involving galvanized steel wire. The most recently completed tariff case against China, in late May, resulted in tariffs of about 33 percent levied against certain types of imported aluminum products.

A Chinese solar company manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a telephone interview that in any trade case filed by the American industry, “we would be well prepared and are confident we could defend it.”

President Obama recently appeared to support the domestic solar industry’s concerns, in a White House news conference on Oct. 6: “Even if the technology was developed in the United States, they end up going to China because the Chinese government will say, ‘We’re going to help you get started, we’ll help you scale up, we’ll give you low-interest loans or no-interest loans, we will give siting, we will do whatever it takes for you to get started here.’ ”

United States policy toward China has also emerged as an issue in the presidential campaign, provoking an early back-and-forth between the Obama team and Mitt Romney, whom many Democrats expect to be the Republican nominee. Mr. Romney, talking tough in a Republican debate last week, said the United States had been “run over by China” for 20 years and “you have to have a president that will take action.”

In response, Mr. Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod, countered that Mr. Romney once again was flip-flopping, having criticized Mr. Obama in the past as “protectionist” for mounting a trade case against China on behalf of American tire producers.

Matthew L. Wald, Jackie Calmes and Eric Lipton contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/business/global/us-solar-manufacturers-to-ask-for-duties-on-imports.html?partner=rss&emc=rss