SK Innovation threatens to pull its battery operations out of the U.S.

SEOUL — South Korea’s SK Innovation Co Ltd said on Tuesday it is looking at all possibilities including pulling its battery company out of the United States if President Joe Biden does not overturn a trade panel’s final decision in opposition to it by April 11.

“The corporation has been consulting with professionals to examine ways to withdraw our battery company from the United States,” a spokeswoman at SK Innovation said.

“We are reviewing possibilities to shift our U.S. battery production to Europe or China, which would cost us tens of billions of received,” she additional.

SK Innovation and LG Chem’s wholly owned battery division, LG Electrical power Resolution, have been locked in a dispute more than claims SK misappropriated trade tricks connected to electric car or truck battery engineering.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) final month sided with LG, issuing a constrained 10-calendar year exclusion order prohibiting imports into the United States of SK’s lithium-ion batteries. That ruling would come to be invalid if the two firms agree to a settlement.

The ITC ruling in opposition to SK, which provides electric vehicle batteries to Volkswagen, Ford and Hyundai between others, can also be overturned by Biden.

SK has warned it would be forced to halt building of a $two.6 billion battery plant in the condition of Ga if Biden does not use a sixty-working day presidential evaluate period of time to overturn the final decision.

Past 7 days, SK submitted a movement to the ITC requesting it not enforce its February ruling, contacting the orders “catastrophic”.

“The Commission’s orders destroy the financial viability of SK’s expense in battery production in Ga and will rationally and inevitably lead to its abandonment,” SK said in a filing.

The ITC ruling allowed some exemptions, allowing SK to import elements for domestic production of batteries for Ford’s EV F-150 system for four yrs, and for Volkswagen America’s MEB electric car or truck line for two yrs.