By Sethuraman N R
(Reuters) – India’s largest solar module maker Waaree Energies does not expect U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs to impact the company’s business in the near term, CEO Amit Paithankar said on Thursday.
Trump has slapped a 27% reciprocal tariff on India as part of sweeping tariffs on most imports into the United States.
The U.S. is a key market for Indian solar module makers, and accounted for nearly one-fifth of Waaree’s revenue in the last financial year.
Paithankar expects the revenue split to persist in the fiscal year that started on April 1.
“India is in a much better position (in terms of tariffs) … compared with the stack of countries which we compete with in the solar domain in the U.S.,” Paithankar said in an interview.
“As an industry, we (India) should see how to have a much larger pie of the overall American market (due to relatively lower tariffs),” Paithankar said.
The U.S. has imposed much higher tariffs on China and Southeast Asian countries.
Solar module shipments from India made up about 5% of U.S. imports in the first quarter of 2024, compared with 87% from Southeast Asian countries, according to policy think-tank Council on Energy, Environment and Water.
Waaree’s Paithankar expects tariffs to have some impact on pricing but said the company will continue to invest in the U.S., which it sees as an “extremely important market”.
The company aims to double its module manufacturing capacity in Brookshire, Texas to 3.2 gigawatts over the next few months and has an order book of 26.5 gigawatts, with more than half of that coming from the U.S.
(Reporting by Sethuraman NR; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
