Sibanye Appeals US Ruling to Protect Montana Palladium

Sibanye-Stillwater, the only company that mines palladium in the United States, is taking its fight over Russian palladium imports to federal court. On July 16, the company filed a summons with the US Court of International Trade challenging a US International Trade Commission ruling that Russian palladium does not injure American producers, as Mining Weekly reported. The mines at stake sit in the Beartooth Mountains south of Columbus, Montana.

At a glance

• What happened? Sibanye-Stillwater appealed an ITC ruling that found Russian palladium imports do not injure US producers, filing suit at the US Court of International Trade on July 16.
• What is Sibanye-Stillwater defending? The Stillwater and East Boulder mines in Montana, the only primary source of US-mined palladium.
• What did Commerce already find? In its final determination, Commerce set a 132.83 percent antidumping duty on Russian palladium, calling the imports unfairly dumped and subsidized.

What is Sibanye-Stillwater appealing?

The case started in July 2025, when Sibanye-Stillwater and the United Steelworkers petitioned the US government for trade relief on Russian palladium. The US Department of Commerce agreed with them twice: an April 2026 antidumping determination found a 132.83 percent dumping margin for Russian producers, backed by a separate countervailing duty finding that Russia subsidizes the metal. Under normal trade law, that combination leads to duties on the imports.

It did not, because on May 29, 2026, the International Trade Commission ruled the other way on the second required test: whether those dumped imports actually injure the domestic industry. The Commission voted that they do not, which means Commerce cannot issue the antidumping and countervailing duty orders despite its own dumping finding. Sibanye-Stillwater argues the Commission overlooked evidence that Russian import volumes climbed roughly 35 percent from 2022 to 2024 while US palladium prices fell about 50 percent over the same stretch, a pattern the company says points to injury the ruling missed.

Why does this matter for Montana’s only palladium mines?

Stillwater and East Boulder are not just Montana’s biggest platinum group metal producers, they are the country’s only ones. Our Montana state report covers the Stillwater Complex as one of the highest-grade PGM deposits on Earth, running alongside Butte’s copper legacy as a second pillar of the state’s mining economy. A trade case that determines whether Russian competitors face US duties goes straight to how much of the domestic palladium market that one Montana district can hold.

Palladium’s main job is one most drivers never think about: a catalytic converter in a gasoline engine relies on it to convert exhaust into less harmful gases before it leaves the tailpipe. Our metals hub walks through how mined ore becomes the refined metal that ends up loaded into that ceramic honeycomb. A mine that stops being economic to run does not just cost Montana jobs, it removes a US source for a metal the auto industry cannot easily do without.

What happens next in the trade case?

An appeal at the US Court of International Trade is not a quick process. The court will review whether the ITC’s injury determination followed the law and considered the evidence properly, a review that commonly runs months, and it can send the case back to the Commission rather than resolve it outright. Until then, Commerce’s dumping and subsidy findings stand on the books, but no antidumping or countervailing duty order is in effect on Russian palladium.

Sibanye-Stillwater has said it intends to keep pursuing every available US trade remedy to protect a viable domestic palladium industry. Nothing about the appeal changes Stillwater or East Boulder’s operations today. It is a legal fight over the rules those mines compete under, not a change to what comes out of the ground in the Beartooth Mountains.