US court sides with POSCO over countervailing duties

Seoul, Aug 13 (IANS) The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) has ruled in favour of South Korean steel giant POSCO in a suit against the United States' imposition of countervailing duties on the company, Seoul's industry ministry said on Wednesday.

In December 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed 0.87 percent countervailing tariffs on POSCO's carbon and alloy steel plates, claiming the Korean company was selling its products at unfairly low prices in the U.S. market thanks to government subsidies, reports Yonhap news agency.

At the time, the commerce department said Korea's low industrial electricity rates constituted a government subsidy for companies, and the country's steel, semiconductor and petrochemical industries used excessively large amounts of electricity to take advantage of the low rates.

It had also claimed the Korean government provided extra carbon emission permits to POSCO, which could be considered a type of countervailable subsidy.

The CIT has refuted Washington's argument, saying heavy electricity usage of a company does not mean it received a "disproportionate" amount of subsidy and the U.S. department "unreasonably" grouped steel with two other unrelated industries, according to the ministry.

The ministry said the CIT also accepted the Korean side's argument that extra permits within the carbon emissions trading system do not constitute a forfeiture of government revenue, and the Korean government did not allocate additional permits to any specific enterprise or industry.

With the court's decision, the U.S. commerce department is required to reconsider its determination regarding the specificity of Korea's electricity subsidy and POSCO's extra emissions permits, and submit its revision to the CIT within 60 days of the ruling.

Meanwhile, POSCO Future M Co., the battery materials unit of steel giant POSCO Holdings, said it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China's CNGR Advanced Material Co. to cooperate on a battery materials project.

The MOU aims to expand POSCO Future M's rechargeable battery cathode material business, the company said in a press release. CNGR's Korean subsidiary, Fino, also joined the partnership.

POSCO Future M currently produces cathodes for nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) and nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum (NCMA) batteries, but plans to expand its supply to lithium manganese-rich (LMR) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

—IANS

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