A Montana mine has blamed its plummeting profitability on foreigners flooding the global market with metals to illegally drive down prices and has petitioned for tariffs to rectify its plummeting profits.
An international court has found no such tariffs are needed.
And this week, Sibanye-Stillwater, which operates the mine in question, officially filed its appeal of the International Trade Court's unfavorable decision.
It isn't just the mine company that has alleged prices for the palladium it produces in Stillwater County have been driven downward as a result of Russian firms flooding the global market with the metal in recent years, leading to several hundred layoffs at Sibanye-Stillwater in 2023 and 2024. Numerous Montana politicians have echoed those claims and proposed legislation by the state's Congressional delegation would have outright banned the import of the metal from Russia into the U.S.
The tariffs the company sought were described as a mechanism that would make a more fair and stable market for Sibanye, which owns the primary source of palladium in the U.S., and the company was provisionally granted the tariffs in February, after a positive decision by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But the International Trade Court determined the tariffs weren’t necessary at the end of May.
The official June decision noted external business conditions contributing to the decrease in palladium, rather than blaming Russian interference. Electric vehicles, which have increased in popularity in recent years, do not use catalytic converters that palladium is often used for, the trade court commissioners noted. Sibanye said the development of electric vehicles has slowed down after the Trump administration removed tax credits. Still, consumption of palladium has decreased from 2023 to 2025.
Seven of nine importers asked by the court said that they hadn’t bought palladium from Russia, despite Sibanye's claim that flooding of the market in recent years has hampered its ability to compete. Commissioners noted that customers were “self-sanctioning” and not buying from Russia while the ongoing Ukraine war continues.
“The only importer/purchaser that reported purchasing Russian palladium instead of domestically produced palladium … reported that the subject import prices were not lower than U.S.-produced product,” commissioners wrote.
The body went on to say that it couldn’t confirm whether Sibanye has lost any sales from Russian imports and found that the country’s exporters did not sell the metal below typical price, as Sibanye alleged.
The commissioners found that the announcement of tariffs in February did nothing to raise the price of palladium. After initial spikes in January this year, the price for the metal has gone down by 20% since the start of 2026, though it’s still higher than the lows of 2023 and 2024.
“The domestic industry’s decline in performance stemmed from a decline in global pricing (set by global supply and demand rather than subject imports), an overall decline in demand, and the domestic industry’s cost structure. … Russian import volumes and their share of consumption declined … while overall U.S. apparent consumption was decreasing, and therefore, subject imports did not gain market share at the domestic industry’s expense. We also found that there was no oversupply of subject imports in the U.S. market,” commissioners concluded in their 361-page publication.
In Sibanye’s Thursday appeal, the company and a union representing the mines’ employees alleged that the commission’s conclusions failed to address other evidence and was inconsistent in places.
For instance, the parties alleged that the commissioners had failed to properly account for several months where Russia hadn’t contributed any palladium after the company made its challenge. They also continued to allege that Russia had flooded the market in recent years, which continued to reduce the likelihood of the South Africa-based company to reopen the western portion of the Stillwater mine that was closed in 2024 because of slumping prices.
In a press release issued this July in response to the appeal, the company wrote that “as the sole primary US producer of palladium and given the ongoing importance of ensuring a resilient and responsibly sourced domestic supply of this critical mineral, the Company will continue to pursue all available US trade remedies to protect and sustain a viable domestic palladium industry.”