The penalties, which are still subject to final confirmation by the International Trade Commission in Washington next month, are the latest round in a series of trade battles between Beijing and Washington over the past four years involving China’s rapid rise to dominance in solar panel manufacturing.

The call for the United States to “appropriately manage trade frictions” appeared to be the latest hint of a broad desire in Beijing to pursue a negotiated settlement, along the lines of last year’s agreement between Beijing and the European Union. Officials in Brussels effectively set an annual quota for solar panel imports from China, provided that Chinese companies charged a fairly high price for those shipments, which would help European companies compete.

That arrangement helped the Chinese industry stanch the heavy losses it had been incurring for exporting large quantities of solar panels for less than it cost to make them, which had led to bankruptcies of some of the country’s largest solar manufacturers.

He Weiwen, a member of the executive council of the Beijing-based China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, a research group loosely affiliated with the Commerce Ministry, said in an email on Wednesday that he thought the latest tariffs by the United States Commerce Department were not reasonable. The department “should consider possible solutions through consultation and negotiations, like the China-E.U. photovoltaic case,” he said.

But the Obama administration has been hesitant to pursue a similar deal. Environmentalists have been leery of any agreement that keeps prices fairly high for renewable energy. Free-trade advocates contend that quotas are a worse kind of trade restriction than tariffs because they encourage companies to collude in dividing up markets and, unlike tariffs, do not produce any tax revenues to help lighten the burden on other taxpayers.