The last two countries in a five country silicon metal case are in, and every investigation that reached a vote went the way the two American producers asked

The case took sixteen months and lost one country on the way.

The International Trade Commission has determined that an American industry is materially injured by reason of imports of silicon metal from Australia and Norway, which Commerce found were sold below fair value and subsidised by both governments. The Commission completed and filed the determinations on August 14. Notice went on public inspection at the Federal Register on Tuesday morning.

Silicon metal enters under two tariff subheadings, 2804.69.10 and 2804.69.50. Commissioner Pappas did not take part.

Five countries, three finishing lines

Ferroglobe USA of Beverly, Ohio and Mississippi Silicon of Burnsville, Mississippi filed the petitions, and the Commission instituted the investigations effective April 24, 2025. What began as one case became three, because Commerce handled the countries at different speeds. It postponed the antidumping finals for Australia and Norway and lined the subsidy investigations up behind them. It did not postpone Angola or Laos.

So the votes came in three batches. On April 6 the Commission reached final affirmative determinations on dumped imports from Angola and Laos and on subsidised imports from Laos. On August 14 it reached them on Australia and Norway, dumping and subsidy both.

Thailand is the one that did not get a vote on injury. The Commission terminated the countervailing duty investigation there after finding imports from Thailand negligible, which is a threshold question about how much arrived rather than a judgment about how it was priced.

Add the rest up and the pattern is plain. Four antidumping investigations, four affirmative. Three subsidy investigations decided, three affirmative. One dropped for want of volume.

The calendar stopped

There is a footnote worth reading in a notice that is otherwise arithmetic. The Commission scheduled the final phase and a public hearing in November 2025, and then, in its own words, tolled its schedule for the proceeding because of the lapse in appropriations and the ensuing cessation of Commission operations. A revised schedule published on December 16. A supplemental schedule followed on July 9 this year once Commerce had finished with Australia and Norway.

Rates are not here. The Commission decides injury and Commerce sets the duty, and this document contains no number for either country. What it contains is the finding that lets the duties exist at all, and the Commission's reasoning behind it runs to a publication released this month, number 5774.