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The US International Trade Commission (USITC) and Brazil's Foreign Trade Secretariat (SECEX) both opened reviews on 1 October 2026 of the anti-dumping duties their countries apply to magnesium from China.
An anti-dumping duty is an extra import charge on goods found to be sold below their fair value. It normally lapses after five years unless a "sunset" review concludes that removing it would likely bring back the dumping and the harm to local producers. Both cases are at that opening, procedural stage, and neither has reached a ruling.
In the United States this is the fourth such review of the order on alloy magnesium from China that the Department of Commerce first issued on 15 April 2005. The order has been continued after each review since, most recently from November 2021. Interested parties have until 2 November 2026 to respond, and comments on whether those responses are adequate are due by 8 December 2026. The Commission will use them to choose between a full review and a faster, expedited one, the route it took in the second and third reviews. The domestic industry at stake is defined broadly, and includes grinders that make granular magnesium (chips for thixomolding) and die casters that recycle magnesium scrap.
In Brazil, SECEX acted on a petition from the domestic producer Rima Industrial S.A., and the review notice puts the preliminary relative dumping margin on Chinese crude metallic magnesium at 120.9%. The review examines dumping from April 2025 to March 2026 and injury from April 2021 to March 2026. The existing duties stay in force while it runs, and the authorities have ten months to complete it.
Both reviews open while Western companies work to build new primary magnesium supply. Magrathea, through its Arkansas Magnesium joint venture with TETRA Technologies, has produced primary magnesium of more than 99.9% purity from Arkansas brine, and Latrobe Magnesium is pursuing a 50,000-tonne-a-year primary plant in South Carolina, with a final investment decision planned for around March 2028 and first production around April 2030.
In New Jersey, Tidal Metals says it has developed a process that makes magnesium metal from seawater or desalination brine using only electricity, ending in the electrolysis of magnesium chloride, and has been developing a 200-tonne-a-year pilot plant ahead of a first commercial plant of at least 10,000 tonnes a year. In December 2025 it signed a memorandum of understanding with the distributor Alexander Chemical to package and market the chlorine the process yields, nearly three tonnes for every tonne of magnesium.
Source: US Federal Register, 91 FR 62550 (USITC Inv. 731-TA-1071, Fourth Review) — 1 Oct 2026
Source: Yieh, Brazil initiates AD sunset review on crude metallic magnesium imports from China — 1 Oct 2026
