A solar panel maker in Georgia that has booked $230 million in federal tax credits stands to collect hundreds of millions more as it pursues plans to create the first end-to-end solar manufacturing chain in the US, easing reliance on China and related concerns about the use of forced labor.
Still, some industry observers have called for increased scrutiny of the firm’s supply chain by US Customs and Border Protection officials, who are responsible for enforcing the import ban on goods linked to forced labor in western China’s Xinjiang region. The federal law is aimed at punishing China over its oppression of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, though Chinese officials deny any human rights violations and call their labor programs “poverty alleviation.
No Qcells imports have surfaced among those known to have been stopped for inspection, according to five people in the solar industry who track detentions. Nor has South Korea—from which Qcells exports the bulk of its components after processing Chinese wafers into photovoltaic cells—been singled out on a countries-of-origin list published by Customs officials.
The Customs agency in February sent a 19-page questionnaire to solar importers asking about their supply chains and requesting that they “document internal controls, policies and procedures which ensure that raw materials used in production by your company do not contain inputs produced with forced labor at any level of the supply chain.
Gokin Solar’s June 2023 prospectus for an initial public offering on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange shows that at least one-third of its polysilicon supply that year originated in Xinjiang—from Xinjiang Daqo, the sanctioned entity, and from another supplier, Xinjiang Xinte Crystal Silicon Hightech Co. Neither Gokin nor Xinjiang Xinte responded to requests for comment.
“Although this legislation has been deployed in only limited ways to date, it creates genuine risk for foreign companies in China,” said Keith Hand, a professor and director of East Asian Legal Studies at University of California, San Francisco. “Many US multinationals are caught in the crosshairs.”