The US Commerce Department will issue a preliminary decision on Friday as to whether it believes solar products from Chinese mainland and Taiwan were sold in the United States for less than their fair value.

The Commerce department determined last month that the Chinese government gave unfair subsidies to solar product manufacturers, and it imposed new tariffs of up to 35.21 percent on imports.

The decision came after the US arm of Germany-based solar manufacturer SolarWorld AG claimed in a petition that Chinese manufacturers were avoiding duties by taking the production of cells used in solar panels to Taiwan, and flooding the US market with cheap goods, harming competitiveness for US companies.

The department had said earlier in the year that it believed that there is reasonable indication that solar imports from the Chinese mainland were hurting the US solar industry.

SolarWorld had said prior to last month’s decision that the company could compete with "any producer in the world," but that it should "not be forced to compete with the Chinese government". Products from China "distort the marketplace" and hurt the US solar industry, he said.

After the June countervailing determination in June by the Commerce Department, the Chinese government responded that the US was abusing trade rules to protect its industry and that it had been "ignoring the facts".