US Aluminium Foil Trade Group files antidumping duty on five countries aiming to protect domestic industry

The Aluminum Association’s Foil Trade Enforcement Working Group has filed petitions for antidumping and countervailing duty on Armenia, Brazil, Oman, Russia, and Turkey on Wednesday, September 30, alleging aluminium foils imports from these countries into the US are causing material injury to the domestic industry. In April 2018, the US Department of Commerce had announced antidumping and countervailing duty orders on similar aluminium foil products from China.

“We continue to see how persistent aluminum overcapacity driven by structural subsidies in China harms the entire sector,” said Tom Dobbins, president & CEO of the Aluminum Association. “While domestic aluminum foil producers were able to invest and expand following the initial targeted trade enforcement action against imports from China in 2018, those gains were short lived. As Chinese imports receded from the U.S. market, they were replaced by a surge of unfairly-traded aluminum foil imports that are injuring the U.S. industry.”

The Group alleged in the petitions that imported aluminium foil from those five subject countries are being sold at unfairly low prices in the United States. The petitions also stated that foils are being dumped in the US at margins of up to 107.61 per cent.

“The U.S. aluminum industry relies on strong international supply chains and we took this step only after significant deliberation and examination of the facts and data on the ground,” added Dobbins. “It is simply not tenable for domestic foil producers to continue to operate in an environment of persistent unfairly traded imports.”

The petitions are filed simultaneously with the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission (USITC).

Between 2017 and 2019, the United States aluminium foil imports from the five subject countries increased by 110 per cent to more than 210 million pounds. Domestic foil producers had expected to benefit from the publication of antidumping and countervailing duty orders in 2018, and thus, pursued substantial capital investments to increase their capacity to meet domestic demand. But aggressively low-priced imports from those five countries captured the lion share of the market previously held by imports from the China.

“Imports of unfairly low-priced aluminum foil from the subject countries have surged into the U.S. market, devastating pricing in the U.S. market and resulting in further injury to U.S. producers following the imposition of measures to address unfairly-traded imports from China in April 2018,” added John M. Herrmann, of Kelley Drye & Warren LLP, the petitioners’ trade counsel.

The petitioners are John M. Herrmann, Paul C. Rosenthal, R. Alan Luberda, and Joshua R. Morey of the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren, LLP.