If you sell residential installs, your spring quotes went on a clock Thursday. Panels entered for consumption from 12:01 a.m. eastern on December 4 live under the new regime; panels entered before that morning do not. The entry date is the whole test, and it is the one thing on this page fully inside your control.
The proclamation closes the Section 232 polysilicon investigation and covers the chain end to end — raw polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, finished modules. It carries two mechanisms. A 15% ad valorem duty, which every headline quotes. And minimum import prices, which the headlines mention second, and which will do most of the work.
The floors and the duty apply together — the proclamation’s own words are that these duties apply “in addition to any other duties, taxes, fees, exactions, and charges.”
in the event that the entered value on the entry summary of the imported merchandise is less than the MIP, the imported merchandise shall be subject to a specific tariff equal to the difference between the entered value on the entry summary and the MIP.
Sit with what that clause does to a cheap panel. A module entered at thirty cents a watt owes the fifteen percent — four and a half cents — plus eight cents to reach the floor. Entered at twenty-five cents, it owes under four cents of duty and thirteen cents of floor charge. The cheaper the invoice, the bigger the floor’s share: below thirty-eight cents, invoice plus floor charge always lands on thirty-eight, and the duty rides on top. That arithmetic is mine, applied to the proclamation’s own formula, and it means one thing: after December 4 there is no such thing as a cheap imported panel.
The paperwork case is harsher still. An importer that cannot document its first arm’s-length sale doesn’t pay the difference — it pays a specific tariff equal to the full minimum price. Thirty-eight cents a watt, on top of whatever the panel cost.
Domestic modules — this is an import measure. The duty is calibrated for some partners: for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and E U members the combined Section 232 plus standard duty is set to total 15%, and the U K takes 10%. The floors, as written, carry no country carve-out. A cheap panel is a cheap panel wherever it sailed from.
What I’d do with the window, in order. Land what you can — module inventory entered before that morning is under the old rules, and the proclamation as published contains no in-transit grace; the entry date decides. Re-paper spring quotes — a fixed-price bid that straddles December 4 on imported modules is now a currency bet; write a tariff contingency or price from landed stock. Re-run the domestic comparison — at a thirty-eight-cent floor plus fifteen percent, some U S-assembled modules stop being the premium option, and that is a sales conversation your customers will actually want to have.
Kept honest. The per-watt scenarios above are my arithmetic — the proclamation’s formula applied to illustrative entered values, not to published market prices; what your distributor charges is between you and them. I did not fetch Annexes I and II, which carry the covered tariff codes, so “modules and cells are covered” rests on the proclamation’s operative text; edge products — frames, glass, mounting — need the annexes read before anyone relies on this. No in-transit clause appears in the proclamation as published, but C B P implementation guidance often adds mechanics and none exists yet; the December 4 line could soften or sharpen in practice. Clause (10) lets the Secretary adjust treatment for partners that adopt equivalent minimum-price systems, so the country list can move. And the 15%-combined calibration for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the E U applies to the duty — not the floors — as written.
Sources, primary, fetched today, August 7, 2026. (1) Presidential proclamation, Adjusting Imports of Polysilicon and its Derivatives into the United States, signed August 6, 2026, published at whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions — source of the 15% ad valorem duty and its effective language (“entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern time on December 4, 2026”), all four minimum import prices ($21/kg polysilicon, $100/kg ingots and wafers, $0.22/watt cells, $0.38/watt modules), the difference formula quoted verbatim above, the full-M I P penalty when documentation is missing, the “in addition to any other duties” stacking clause, the country calibrations for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the E U and the U K, and clause (10)’s equivalent-measures mechanism. (2) Cross-checked for consistency against two independent trade reports — Solar Power World (August 6) and pv magazine USA (August 7); they nominated the story and agree on the mechanics, and no fact in this edition rests on them. The per-watt worked examples were computed today from the proclamation’s own formula and are labeled as computed.
Thursday's polysilicon proclamation is being reported as a 15% tariff on imported solar. The 15% is real. It's also the small half of the document. The proclamation sets minimum import prices — floors — for the whole chain, effective 12:01 a.m. December 4: Polysilicon: $21/kg Ingots and wafers: $100/kg Cells: $0.22 a watt Modules: $0.38 a watt Here's the mechanism, straight from the operative text: if a module's entered value is below the floor, the importer pays "a specific tariff equal to the difference between the entered value on the entry summary and the MIP." On top of the 15%. Run that on a cheap panel. Entered at 30¢/W: 4.5¢ of duty, plus 8¢ of floor charge. Entered at 25¢/W: under 4¢ of duty, plus 13¢ of floor charge. Below 38 cents, invoice plus floor charge always lands on 38. Every dollar shaved off the panel comes back as tariff. After December 4, there is no such thing as a cheap imported panel — that's not rhetoric, it's the formula. And if the importer can't document its first arm's-length sale? The penalty isn't the difference. It's the full floor — 38 cents a watt — on top of whatever the panel cost. Who this doesn't touch: domestic modules. The duty is softened for some partners (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the EU combine to 15%; the UK to 10%) — but the floors, as written, have no country carve-out. If you install for a living, three moves before December 4: 1. Land what you can. Inventory entered before that morning is under the old rules, and there's no in-transit grace in the proclamation as published. The entry date decides. 2. Re-paper spring quotes. A fixed-price bid that straddles December 4 on imported modules is a currency bet now. Write the contingency or price from landed stock. 3. Re-run the domestic comparison. At a 38-cent floor plus 15%, some US-assembled modules stop being the premium option. Your customers will want to hear that math. Kept honest: the per-watt examples are my arithmetic from the proclamation's formula, not market quotes. I haven't read Annexes I and II, which carry the covered tariff codes — edge products need those read first. And CBP guidance hasn't landed yet. Proclamation of August 6, 2026. Effective December 4. The floor is the number.
Use the MRP Personal Design System (Signature). Create a 1080x1350 animated piece titled "Every Dollar You Shave." Bone field (#F4F1EC), Ink type (#141414), Coral Deep (#D9401F) for kickers, labels and rules; Coral Bright (#FF6A4D) spent EXACTLY TWICE — once on "$0.38" when the floor lands in beat 3, once on the final line of the end card. Cormorant for numerals and end card; Manrope Light for labels, captions and footer; Italiana for the SignatureMark. Tall, airy, left-aligned. Max 3 type moves. The piece is A HEADLINE NUMBER THAT SHRINKS, AND A FLOOR LINE THAT IS THE REAL STORY. No panels drawn, no suns, no houses, no flags. Typography only, plus one literal horizontal rule used as a floor. Sequence (about 41 seconds): 1. (0-5s) Kicker top-left, letter-spaced uppercase Manrope in Coral Deep, types on: "SECTION 232 · POLYSILICON · PROCLAMATION OF AUG 6, 2026 · EFFECTIVE DEC 4". Below, one Manrope Light Ink line fades up: "two mechanisms. one headline." Hold. 2. (5-13s) A large Cormorant Ink figure sets center-left: "15%". Manrope Light caption beneath: "the number every headline leads with". Hold a beat — then the figure dims to pale Ink and drifts slightly upward, staying visible. It is not the story. 3. (13-24s) A thin Coral Deep rule draws horizontally across the full frame width at slow reading speed — literally a floor. Sitting on the rule, in Cormorant at very large size, a figure fades up and warms to Coral Bright (moment 1 of 2): "$0.38" with a smaller Manrope "/watt" beside it. Caption beneath the rule: "the minimum price of an imported module". HOLD, unvoiced, at least two seconds. 4. (24-33s) The floor rule and figure dim but stay. Three short Cormorant Ink lines stack beneath, each preceded by a small Coral Deep rule: "entered at 30¢ — pays to 38" / "entered at 25¢ — pays to 38" / "entered at 20¢ — pays to 38". Manrope Light caption: "below the floor, shaving the invoice grows the tariff". 5. (33-41s) Clear. End card in Cormorant, three lines, the third warming to Coral Bright (moment 2 of 2): "After December 4," / "there is no cheap imported panel." / "Land it, re-paper it, or re-price it." Footer in Manrope Light Ink: "PROCLAMATION OF AUG 6, 2026 · 15% + MINIMUM IMPORT PRICES · WORKED EXAMPLES COMPUTED FROM THE PROCLAMATION'S FORMULA". SignatureMark bottom-left: Italiana "Meschelle Peterson" + code63labs. Motion language: fades, one rule drawing as a literal floor, a dim-and-drift for the 15% rather than a removal — the small number should remain faintly visible while the floor dominates. No bounce, no scale-pop, no counters, no glitch. The design rests on beat 2 reading as the expected story and beat 3 physically underlining the real one.
FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: residential solar — written for the people whose customers will ask in January why the quote moved