I am delighted to report that the Department of Commerce has renewed our trade orders for another five years. This time, the Sunset Review was a rout. With no opposition to our filing, Commerce decided to expedite its decision, thus freeing us from a long and expensive full hearing this fall. There was very little doubt our orders would be renewed, but we did not know how long it would take or how much it would cost. Now we know. This summer we will be building on the momentum of our Sunset Review victory by focusing on two issues still unresolved: the Kingtom case, and the Aluminum 232 extrusion tariffs. Both issues will take all of our focus. The Kingtom case took an unexpected turn a few weeks ago during the appeal of the first Enforce and Protect Act (EAPA) case against them filed by Ta Chen. Initially, Customs sided with Ta Chen and found that Kingtom was comingling Chinese-produced extrusions with Dominican extrusions for export to the U.S. Following that, we filed tw
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.