The right deal for America and US aluminium: Charles Johnson, president & CEO, The Aluminum Association

Last week, President Trump signed a proclamation strengthening existing Section 232 aluminium tariffs that he originally implemented in 2018 on national security grounds.

There’s a lot to like and a lot we support in the president’s action. Though – and this is critical – for our industry’s growth, and for national security, we must maintain tariff-free access to aluminium from Canada.

The Aluminum Association welcomes the Trump administration’s focus on this critical material and our industry’s ability to compete. We want and need to open new smelting capacity in the United States, which is President Trump’s intent. It’s been 45 years since the U.S. built a new primary aluminium smelter. Strategic use of these tariffs – paired with unleashed American energy – could help get us there. However, it would take many years before we could smelt all of the metal our economy and our military depend on today. That’s why we need the action from the White House, and a reliable source of metal from Canada to support the jobs and investments happening today.

Reopening smelting capacity will strengthen our national defense, but smelters don’t make fighter jets. Our security also depends on a robust downstream industry that makes all the components of cars, trucks, planes, body armor and, yes, beer cans. And these products support 98 per cent of all U.S. aluminium jobs. The aluminium supply chain for defense is the same one that produces the commercial products all around us, and we will not have one without the other.

During his first term, President Trump was early to recognize these facts. He understands the genuine threat that non-market actors like China and their proxies pose to U.S. manufacturing and the defense industrial base, including critical materials like aluminium. His leadership helped spur more than $10 billion in aluminium industry investment since 2016 to make the products Americans rely on. Much of that investment is underpinned by our strategic use of Canada’s aluminium sector and the integrated North American supply chains. Both strengthened by President Trump through the USMCA in his first term.