Washington, DC & Wauconda, Illinois – The Aluminum Extruders Council (AEC) commends the President’s initiation of a Section 232 investigation on aluminum. As President Trump has recognized, “aluminum … {is a} critical element … of our manufacturing and defense industrial base … which we must defend against unfair trade practices and other abuses.”
As is the case with other core industries identified by the President, unduly low prices caused by excess aluminum capacity in China, government subsidization, and dumped imports have and continue to negatively impact domestic aluminum extruders and their workers.
U.S. aluminum extruders continue to be threatened by the massive surge in Chinese aluminum extrusion exports flooding the global market, resulting in a significant increase in transhipment and circumvention of our antidumping and countervailing duty orders.
The massive amount of Chinese excess aluminum capacity has also crashed aluminum prices decimating our U.S. supply base and putting U.S. extruders at an even greater disadvantage to their unfairly subsidized foreign competitors.
“Aluminum extrusions are a critical component to our nation’s national defense and infrastructure needs,” said Jeff Henderson, President of the AEC. Mr. Henderson went on to note that “in order to adequately address the adverse impact of China’s excess aluminum capacity on our national defense, it is important that the Section 232 investigation also consider the effects of transhipment and circumvention through countries like Vietnam and Malaysia. The AEC welcomes the opportunity to work with the Administration on this critical development.”
The AEC has led the U.S. aluminum extrusion industry in achieving level competition by winning tariff protection that offsets unfair trade practices of extruders/importers of aluminum profiles produced in China. The efforts have been of enormous value to domestic extruders and suppliers. They may have saved the industry. Conservatively, AEC estimates 800 million pounds per year of extrusions are being produced in the U. S. that would have otherwise been lost to China. For more information, visit www.AECFairTrade.org.