The countries most affected by this decision are Germany followed by Bahrain. Other bauxite-exporting countries are on this new list established by the Trump administration.
The US Commerce Department announced on Friday that it will impose preliminary anti-dumping duties "immediately" on imports of aluminum alloy plate from 18 countries including Germany, Barhein, Brazil, Spain, 'India and Italy.
France is not on the list, but it has, however, already suffered an American offensive in 2018, when the Trump administration decides to tax aluminum and steel imported from the European Union, or when it threatens to tax French agricultural products.
Out of those 18 countries, in total, "that's $ 1.96 billion worth of goods and it's a pretty large percentage of the total aluminum industry in this country," US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said, during an interview on Fox Business news.
"The final decisions will be taken in February 2021", that is to say after the presidential election, indicated the minister of Donald Trump, specifying that it was the American Commission of the international trade (ITC), an independent organization, which would take the final decision .
For now, these preliminary duties will be levied "immediately".
The other target countries
He further indicated that the country most affected by these new tariffs would be Germany followed by Bahrain, investigations having shown that these two countries had subsidized their prices the most to export to the United States.
The other countries concerned are Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Oman, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and Turkey.
Wilbur Ross also pointed out that China was not on this list as "a large number of tariffs on their aluminum products" have already been imposed.
“So what is actually happening is that the excess Chinese capacity has been dumped on other markets,” he said.
The imposition of punitive tariffs on aluminum in the spring of 2018 marked the start of the trade war with Beijing.
This conflict has resulted in a decrease in the trade deficit with the Asian giant but the flows have shifted with larger imports from Mexico for example.
In a press release, the Commerce Department recalls that since the start of Donald Trump's mandate, he has initiated 286 investigations, up 267% compared to the same period of the previous mandate.
