Last year, a struggling U.S. solar manufacturer named SolarWorld Americas was part of the effort that convinced President Donald Trump to impose tariffs on imported panels. Now, SolarWorld Industries GmbH is seeking an exemption to those duties.
Confused yet? That’s because there’s more than one SolarWorld, and not all of them like the tariffs that were announced in January.
Here’s the family tree: SolarWorld Americas is a unit of Germany’s SolarWorld AG, which filed for insolvency in May. SolarWorld Industries was formed later and in August acquired two factories in Germany from SolarWorld AG, but not SolarWorld Americas. Got that?
That means there’s no direct connection between the company that asked for tariffs and the similarly named company that’s now seeking an exemption from them. SolarWorld Americas spokesman Ben Santarris said his company operates independently of SolarWorld Industries, and he declined to comment on the German company’s trade filing.