A much bigger local company, MEMC Electronic Materials of O'Fallon, Mo., is also a coalition member. MEMC is both a manufacture of polysilicon, a raw material used in solar panels, and a major developer of solar projects through its SunEdison subsidiary. On May 17, the day the anti-dumping levy was announced, MEMC's share price fell 22 percent.

Unfortunately, U.S. trade law doesn't give upstream and downstream firms any standing in cases like this. The only questions are whether the foreign producers are guilty of dumping, and whether the firms bringing the complaint were injured.

In cases involving China, the definition of dumping is arbitrary. Opponents of the tariffs say that Chinese solar panels actually cost more in the U.S. than they do in China, but because China is considered a non-market economy, the Commerce Department constructs an artificial market price.

“It's not dumping as the common person would think of it, but by the standards of the law, it is,” says Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “This is a law that's written to favor the petitioners.”