WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ahead of U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s meeting today with Canadian Minister for Canada-U.S. Trade Dominic LeBlanc for further trade negotiations, the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA), which represents American steel mills, aluminum extruders, and other domestic metals producers, warned the administration against reducing or trading away Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs.
The Section 232 metals tariffs are national security measures, imposed after Department of Commerce investigations found that import dependence threatens the United States. They are not bargaining chips. The administration strengthened that policy by raising steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 percent, eliminating exemptions, and expanding protection to downstream and derivative products — where 97 percent of U.S. aluminum jobs and the majority of the value-added manufacturing in these industries occurs.
“Our aluminum extruders and our steel mill members are deeply concerned by reports that the protection this administration just finished building could be given away at the negotiating table by USTR,” said Jon Toomey, President of CPA. “Commerce did the hard work here — the investigations, the findings, the analysis that proved these protections are necessary for national security. That work should not be traded away. National security tariffs on critical sectors are not pawns for negotiation. The administration made that commitment to American producers, producers made investment decisions in reliance on it, and there is no deal with Canada or Mexico worth breaking it.”
For aluminum extruders, cutting both primary and downstream tariffs from 50 percent to 25 percent would sharply reduce protection on the American conversion work where jobs and margins are concentrated. At 50 percent, U.S. extruders can compete. At a flat 25 percent, many would be underwater. As CPA has documented extensively in its economic analysis, U.S. aluminum tariff policy must consider the full aluminum value chain.
Steel mills face the same danger: weakening protections after companies have committed capital and restarted capacity would undermine the domestic production Section 232 was designed to restore. CPA’s economic analysis on the Section 232 steel tariffs document how these protections have revitalized American manufacturing, created jobs, and strengthened national security.
“If Canada wants a deal, there is no shortage of things Ottawa can put on the table — America’s national security tariffs on aluminum and steel are not among them,” Toomey added. “The choice is not tariffs versus no tariffs. It is whether the deal is designed so that the American workers these tariffs exist to protect are the ones who pay for it. That is not a good deal. There is no version of it that is.”
CPA has repeatedly urged the administration to keep its Section 232 actions singularly focused on rebuilding domestic output across the full supply chain — not deployed as leverage in unrelated negotiations.
As CPA’s recent report on USMCA aluminum exemptions documents, whatever Canada wins walks straight into the USMCA review — and Mexico takes the same deal. Then it is no longer Canadian metal but Chinese metal, remelted in Mexican cast houses and shipped north as “Mexican” extrusion. This is not speculation — the Department of Justice secured a $549.5 million False Claims Act settlement from Perfectus Aluminum for precisely this playbook: Chinese-owned companies disguising aluminum extrusions to evade duties. Mexican extrusion imports are already up 167 percent, and the extrusion AD/CVD orders are gone. A flat 25 does not open a door to Canada — it opens a highway to China.
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