.svg)
.svg){kind=icon}
Twenty one dollars per kilogram. One hundred dollars per kilogram. Twenty two cents per watt. Thirty eight cents per watt.
Those four figures, set out in Proclamation 11052 (91 FR 51975), are not duty rates. They are floors under the price at which imported polysilicon and its derivatives can be sold in the United States. From 12:01 a.m. eastern time on December 4, 2026, the distance between your price and the applicable floor is collected at the border as a specific duty, and if you file no documentation at all, the duty is the entire floor.
Most coverage of this action leads with the 15% ad valorem rate that sits on top. For a large share of the operations affected, the 15% will be the smaller number. The minimum import price program is where the money is, and it does something a tariff does not: it makes your commercial pricing a customs position you have to certify and defend.
Three cost paths, and the arithmetic that decides which one you are on
The proclamation gives an importer of covered merchandise exactly three outcomes.
Path one: you document, and you sell at or above the floor. At entry, the importer submits documentation establishing or certifying that any first arm's length sale of the merchandise in the United States, or where applicable of downstream products made from that merchandise, will occur at or above the applicable minimum import price. No specific duty attaches. The 15% ad valorem still applies where the article is covered by it.
Path two: you document, and your entered value lands below the floor. The specific duty equals the difference between the entered value on the entry summary and the minimum import price. A module entered at thirty cents per watt against a floor of thirty eight cents carries eight cents per watt in specific duty, plus the ad valorem layer.
Path three: you file no documentation. The specific duty equals the full minimum import price. Not the gap. The floor itself. For a wafer at one hundred dollars per kilogram, the omission of a document doubles the landed cost of the shipment before anything else is calculated.
There is one carve out inside path one, and it is time sensitive. The certification can rest instead on fixed terms in a contract entered into before the date the proclamation was signed, August 6, 2026. Contracts concluded after that date do not qualify, which makes the contract file a dated asset worth locating now rather than in November.
Two structural points about the ad valorem layer. It applies to polysilicon ingots and the derivatives listed in the annexes, and as drafted it does not reach raw polysilicon, which carries the price floor alone. And the rate is not a uniform additive 15% everywhere: for products of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein or a member country of the European Union, the Section 232 duty plus the Column 1 rate together equal 15%, while for products of the United Kingdom the additional rate is 10%. For every other origin, the 15% stacks on top of the applicable rate.
What is driving this, and what it replaces
The findings behind the action are stated plainly in the proclamation. United States share of global polysilicon production capacity fell from 50% in 2005 to less than 2% in 2024. Share of global semiconductor wafer fabrication capacity fell from 37% in 1990 to 10% in 2024. Global polysilicon production grew by more than 270% since 2020, with inventories reaching a record 400,000 tons by the end of 2024. In the solar segment, the finding is that the country is virtually entirely dependent on imports of ingots, wafers and cells.
The instrument choice follows from that diagnosis. A conventional ad valorem duty raises the cost of an import but leaves the exporter free to absorb it in price. A price floor removes that move. It is designed to make undercutting mechanically impossible rather than merely expensive.
This also fills a gap rather than opening a new front. The measure replaces the narrower Section 201 safeguard on solar cells and modules, which expired in February 2026. And it is the latest in a 2026 sequence that trade compliance teams have now lived through several times: the metals adjustments, copper, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and now polysilicon.
On paper, this is one more Section 232 line item to add to a duty model. In practice, it is a different species of obligation. Every prior action in that sequence could be resolved from facts an importer already held: classification, origin, and in the metals programs a smelt and cast or melt and pour declaration. This one requires a statement about a commercial event that has not happened yet, the first arm's length sale, made under a penalty structure that has no equivalent in the rest of the sequence.
That penalty is the part to read twice. If CBP determines that an importer's documentation was materially inaccurate, or that the importer materially failed to comply with its certification, that importer and its affiliates are permanently prohibited from importing polysilicon and polysilicon derivatives into the United States. Penalties may be imposed in addition. A duty is a cost. A permanent prohibition is the end of a supply line.
Where your operation actually sits
Five questions decide the exposure, and they are not the questions a duty model usually asks.
Where was the polysilicon content produced, and does it qualify for drawback? This is the provision most relevant to the corridor, and it runs against the pattern of recent Section 232 actions, which have generally closed drawback. Here, manufacturing drawback under 19 U.S.C. 1313(a) and (b) is available, subject to three conditions that all have to hold: the article is not of a type subject to an antidumping or countervailing duty order, without regard to whether it comes from a country named in the order; the article is a product of a Trade Agreement Partner, a list that expressly includes Mexico and Canada alongside the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and Liechtenstein; and the polysilicon content is composed entirely of polysilicon from a Trade Agreement Partner country. That third condition is the hard one, and it is a supplier documentation problem, not a legal one.
What is the country of the product for rate purposes? The tiered treatment means two shipments of the same article at the same price can carry different duty depending on origin, and the tier is not something a broker can infer from a commercial invoice.
Is your zone posture set? Covered merchandise admitted to a United States foreign trade zone on or after the effective date may be admitted only under privileged foreign status, other than goods eligible for domestic status. Zone operators with covered inventory need that question resolved before December, not at withdrawal.
Are your pre August 6 contracts identifiable? The contract path is only usable if the contract can be produced and its terms shown to be fixed.
Is your purchasing calendar defensible? The proclamation directs the Secretary of Commerce to monitor imports and, where a company is found to be stockpiling ahead of the effective date, to coordinate with CBP to restrict imports by that company and its affiliates. Ordinary inventory build in a normal seasonal pattern is one thing. A December quantity pulled into October is a fact that will be visible in the data.
In our work across more than 190,000 customs operations a year at 39 or more ports, the pattern with an instrument like this is consistent. The duty gets modeled quickly, because it lands in a budget line and someone owns that line. The certification gets improvised, because it lands between commercial and compliance and neither function is used to owning a statement about a future selling price. That gap is where the December problem forms.
Four moves before December 4
1. Map every covered classification against the annexes, at the ten digit level. Annexes I and II define scope. Run them against your active classification master, not your product catalog, and include anything containing polysilicon in a form that may fall inside a listed derivative description.
2. Build the pricing evidence file before you need the certification. The statement covers the first arm's length sale in the United States, including sales of downstream products made from the imported merchandise. That means the file has to connect an entry to a forward selling price, and someone has to own the reconciliation when actual sales prices move. Decide now who signs it and what evidence supports it.
3. Resolve polysilicon origin for the drawback test. Product origin and content origin are different questions here, and the drawback condition turns on the second. If your supplier cannot document that the polysilicon content originates entirely in a Trade Agreement Partner country, the drawback claim is not available no matter how the finished article is classified or where it was assembled.
4. Settle the zone and calendar questions in writing. Confirm the admission status posture for covered inventory, and document the commercial rationale for any purchasing that lands between now and the effective date.
A price you can revise, an authorization you cannot
A duty rate misjudged is a variance. It shows up in a quarter, it gets explained, and the model gets corrected for the next one.
A certification that proves materially inaccurate is a different order of consequence. It does not produce a variance. It produces an importer, and every affiliate of that importer, permanently unable to bring polysilicon or its derivatives into the United States. There is no version of the pricing conversation that is worth that outcome, which is why the pricing conversation and the compliance conversation need to be the same conversation, starting now and not in November.
Talk to a Joffroy expert about a covered lines and polysilicon origin review for your solar or semiconductor inputs, on both sides of the border, before the December 4 effective date.
TRADE. UNDER CONTROL.
