The silicon metal duties are in force at up to 32.57 percent, and seven months of entries in the middle of the case will be liquidated without a cent of countervailing duty

An importer who brought Norwegian silicon metal through customs in April will pay no countervailing duty on it.

Not a reduced rate. Nothing. The Commerce Department issued antidumping and countervailing duty orders on silicon metal from Australia and Norway on Friday, applicable 21 August, and buried in the routine part of each is the window where the assessment does not reach.

The rates

On the subsidy side, Simcoa Operations of Australia is at 32.57 percent ad valorem and Elkem ASA of Norway is at 17.27 percent. On the dumping side, Simcoa is at 6.16 percent and Elkem at 2.47 percent. The all-others rate matches the named company in all four cases, which is what happens when one exporter carries a country's investigation.

Add the two deposits an importer posts on the same entry and Australian material comes to 38.73 percent, Norwegian material to 19.74 percent. They are collected separately and the orders state them separately.

Commerce also names the companies it found cross-owned with each exporter, which is how a subsidy rate travels beyond the entity that was investigated: three Australian affiliates for Simcoa, including its mining arm, and three Norwegian ones for Elkem.

Four months, and then it stops

Provisional measures are the reason for the hole, and the mechanism is in the statute rather than in anyone's discretion.

When Commerce reaches an affirmative preliminary determination it can order Customs to hold entries unliquidated while the case finishes. On the countervailing duty side, section 703(d) allows that for four months and no longer. The preliminary subsidy determinations published on 26 September 2025, so the four months ran out on 24 January this year, and the Commission did not publish its final injury determinations until 19 August. Commerce has instructed Customs to liquidate the entries in between without regard to countervailing duties. That is 207 days.

The dumping side got an extension and still ran short. Exporters accounting for a significant proportion of shipments asked Commerce to stretch the four months to six, which section 733(d) permits, and it did. The preliminaries published 9 February. Six months later, on 7 August, the extension expired, and entries from 8 August through 18 August fall outside the assessment as well. Eleven days.

Suspension of liquidation resumed on 19 August, the day the Commission's notice ran in the Federal Register, and cash deposits have been required since.

What is still on the hook

The gap sits in the middle of the case, not at the start of it.

Countervailing duties are assessed on unliquidated entries made on or after 26 September 2025, the date the preliminary subsidy determinations published, and the orders carve out only the gap. So the same importer buying the same material from the same supplier owes subsidy duty on a December entry, owes nothing on a June one, and posts 32.57 percent on a September one. Antidumping duties reach back to 9 February 2026 on the same pattern, with the eleven day carve-out at the end.

The scope is a chemistry test

The appendix defines the merchandise by assay rather than by trade name. Silicon metal in the scope contains at least 85.00 percent and less than 99.99 percent silicon, and less than 4.00 percent iron, by actual weight, in all forms and sizes including powder. Semiconductor grade material, at 99.99 percent or above, is out.

This publication covered the International Trade Commission's injury vote on 18 August and said then that the rates were Commerce's to set and that the notice gave no date for an order. Both are now on the record. The petitions behind the case were filed by Ferroglobe USA of Beverly, Ohio and Mississippi Silicon of Burnsville, Mississippi, according to the Commission's notice; neither Commerce order names them.