Last month I held an emergency webinar to discuss breakthroughs in our 232 aluminum tariff discussions with the Department of Commerce (DOC). Efforts to get our message to the DOC seem to be paying off–for now. The DOC has asked our U.S. extrusion industry to make the case to have our 232 aluminum extrusion tariffs put back in place. In my webinar, I walked through the data they want us to provide. Many of you have done so, and I thank you! However, others haven’t yet done so. We need you – all of you – to help in this effort. We may not get another shot at this. So, let’s get it done. The hope is that reinstatement of the 232 aluminum extrusion tariffs will dull the growing imports we are seeing. I don’t think it will solve all our problems, but it may take some of the noise out of the system so we can see which countries are truly strategic threats. I think we all agree that we should not initiate a trade case unless we know what impacts the 232 tariffs could have on the s
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.