Trade Cheaters Are Killing America's Aluminum Industry Jobs | Opinion

Newsweek 
March 26, 2024

America’s economy continues to spur demand for consumer goods and manufactured products needed to rebuild roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. The nation has a historic opportunity to harness this growth to boost the middle class and build an economy for all. But only rigorous enforcement of fair-trade laws will safeguard the future and stop foreign companies from killing American jobs.

U.S. demand for aluminum extrusions, which are used in appliances, cars, patio furniture, window frames, and many other items, increased 26 percent from 2020 to 2022. Yet neither the hundreds of American companies making extrusions nor the 160,000 workers directly and indirectly employed by them benefitted.

The U.S. extrusion industry stands at a crossroads. The question is whether the U.S. industry will get the relief necessary to allow it to reinvest and re-shore capacity to hire more workers to support growing demand or if domestic manufacturers continue to lose money, hemorrhage market share, and lay off workers by the thousands because China and 13 other countries are allowed to dump extrusions into the U.S. at below-market prices.

China and the other nations subsidize the production of these goods and look the other way or incentivize this behavior as their manufacturers flood U.S. markets with them. These exports are not only unfair but illegal. They cost U.S. companies at least $788.5 million in sales from 2020 to 2022, substantially damaging a $7 billion-a-year industry.