Since 2011, the U.S. aluminum extrusion industry has benefited from some of the most effective trade orders ever issued by the U.S. government. During that time, Chinese imports as a percentage of market share has dropped from 25% to less than 1%. So, manning the desk at the AEC that handles trade orders should be a pretty quiet job, right? Well, not in the last 30 days! The impacts of China’s unrelenting overproduction and continuing investment in new capacity is effecting markets all over the world, and in some of those cases, this translates into new imports from these countries into North America. China’s actions are displacing local production in other countries, which in turn are forced to find new markets for their extrusion production. In other cases, China has invested in new extrusion plants in these countries as a part of their ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. However, this month we were witness to China’s favorite play: circumvention. ...
The Aluminum Extruders Council (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. Our efforts have been of enormous value to domestic extruders and suppliers. Conservatively, an estimated 800 million pounds per year of extrusions are being produced in the U. S. that would have otherwise been lost to China.