AEC Joins MTE Coalition

The Aluminum Extruders Council (AEC; Wauconda, IL), has joined Manufacturers for Trade Enforcement, a coalition of leading U.S. industry trade groups opposed to the automatic granting of market economy status for China at the end of 2016. AEC joins the American Iron & Steel Institute, the Metals Service Center Institute, the Forging Industry Association and more than 15 other groups that together directly employ more than one million American workers in their collective industries.

China has claimed that it should be automatically accorded treatment as if it were a market economy after the 15th anniversary of its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2016. U.S. law requires that the Department of Commerce make a market economy status (MES) determination based on established criteria, which many experts agree that China has not met.

Though China has made a number of economic reforms in recent years, the Chinese economy remains fundamentally a non-market economic system dominated by the Communist Party and the state. The party and the government today still play a major and direct role in many critical aspects of the economy, including the financial system, upstream resource and energy sectors, and through ownership and control of many strategic industries, including the aluminum extrusion industry. Chinese government ownership and financial support encourage and enable excess production despite weaker demand. As supported production makes its way into the global marketplace at unfair low prices, it displaces American production and jobs.

The U.S. aluminum extrusion industry provides a perfect example of Chinese non-market economy practices at work, adversely affecting domestic trade. By the end of 2009, a recession year, Chinese imports of aluminum extrusions were rising at an alarming pace. In Q4 of 2009, Chinese imports accounted for nearly one-fifth of the entire U.S. market. Years of vigilant advocacy by AEC has turned the tide in the North American aluminum extrusion industry’s struggle to level the playing field in the international fair trade arena. The International Trade Commission imposed game-changing duties and penalties on Chinese extrusion imports beginning in May 2011 that saved the domestic industry.

“Since the tariff orders went into effect, China continues to export their over-production of aluminum extrusions throughout the world,” stated Jeff Henderson, the president of AEC. “Although the tariffs have helped the domestic extrusion industry recover, we will continue to fight for a fair and level playing field as long as China continues their non-market economy practices.”

Through the tariff actions, AEC conservatively estimates that an estimated 600 million pounds per year of extrusions are being produced in the U.S. that would have otherwise been lost to China. To learn more about their fight for fair trade please click here. China is not the target of anti-dumping investigations worldwide because of its non-market economy status. It is precisely due to the exportation of massive overproduction and continuing international price discrimination that Chinese industries are the main subject of anti-dumping actions.

“The AEC is pleased to lend support to and join voices with Manufacturers for Trade Enforcement,” added Henderson. “Granting China Market Economy Status at the WTO will make it more difficult, if not impossible, to fight dumping by Chinese extruders, eroding or even erasing the gains we have made.”

www.aec.org,  www.tradeenforcement.org