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Aluminium/Bauxite

Canadian craft brewers scramble for aluminum cans – by Marcy Nicholson (Reuters U.S. – July 31, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

CALGARY (Reuters) – Canadian microbreweries are facing a shortage of cans and higher costs, forcing some to cut beer production after the country imposed retaliatory import duties on U.S. aluminum imports in the busy summer season.

Though Canada is the world’s third biggest aluminum producer and cans are made in the country, beer makers also rely on the import of more than 2 billion cans annually, largely from the United States, Statistics Canada data shows.

So when Canada struck back at the United States’ tariffs on aluminum imports on July 1, and included cans, some craft brewers received notices of higher prices due to the duties while others have been unable to secure their usual supply of aluminum cans.

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Rio’s $7 Billion Windfall Points to Mining’s Lesson Learned – by Thomas Biesheuvel, David Stringer and Martin Ritchie (Bloomberg News – August 1, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Rio Tinto Group’s $7 billion pledge to shareholders is the latest sign the world’s biggest miners are resisting the temptation to backslide.

The mining industry has undergone a dramatic makeover since the end of the last commodity boom. Investors and management remain wary of pricey deals after much of the sector got burned by overpaying for assets and few among the largest producers see the need for major new supply growth.

Rio is generating massive amounts of cash even as cost pressures rise, and its low debt levels mean the No. 2 miner has financial capacity to move on acquisitions or projects. For now, it’s holding fire.

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Commentary: A turbulent year for alumina market could get still worse – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 31, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Alumina is having a turbulent year. The intermediate product sitting between bauxite and refined metal on the aluminium production chain doesn’t normally grab the headlines.

But it did in April, when the spot price doubled to over $700 per tonne as the market reacted to U.S. sanctions on Oleg Deripaska and his Rusal empire.

The sanctions threw into doubt the future of Rusal’s Aughinish alumina plant in Ireland, threatening a second blow to global production after the part closure of the Alunorte refinery in Brazil.

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Trump’s aluminum tariffs are unlikely to produce a major smelter revival, experts say – by Daniel Dale (Toronto Star – July 28, 2018)

https://www.thestar.com/

WASHINGTON—Three weeks after President Donald Trump proclaimed that America’s aluminum businesses were booming, “through the roof,” because of his tariffs, America’s largest aluminum producer made its quarterly earnings announcement.

Alcoa said it was still earning billions. But it also said it was lowering its profit forecast. Part of the reason: the tariffs, which it expected to cost $14 million (U.S.) a month. The company operates three smelters in Canada, which Trump declined to exempt.

Alcoa’s complaint highlighted the scant corporate support for the 10 per cent tariffs. Unlike Trump’s 25 per cent steel tariffs, which were endorsed by U.S. steelmakers, the industry group for the American aluminum industry is opposed to the aluminum tariffs.

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Commentary: Smelter hits halt global aluminium production growth – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 25, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Global aluminium production growth ground to a standstill in the first half of this year. The world’s smelters produced 31.76 million tonnes of metal in January-June, a 1 percent decline on the first half of 2017, according to the International Aluminium Institute (IAI).

Expressed in annualised terms, global output in June was almost two million tonnes lower than a year earlier. Production outside of China has been creeping higher since January but the growth rate is being constrained by an unusually high level of disruption with multiple plants operating at reduced rates.

National run rates in China, the world’s largest single producer, have also been recovering from last year’s combination of “illegal” capacity closures and winter heating season restrictions but are still down on year-earlier levels.

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Chinese aluminum foil maker sues U.S. over anti-dumping duties – by Tom Daly (Reuters U.S. – July 23, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese aluminum foil producer Shantou Wanshun Package Material Stock Co on Monday said its subsidiary is suing the United States over twin anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties Washington imposed on its shipments.

In a statement to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Wanshun said Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials, which was hit with a countervailing duty of 17.14 percent and an anti-dumping duty of 37.99 percent earlier this year, had filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Zhongji was among the Chinese foil companies that unsuccessfully filed a joint “no injury” claim with the U.S. International Trade Commission last year as Washington probed whether the companies were unfairly subsidised, and is now trying to reverse the duties on its own.

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COLUMN-Pain for aluminium shorts as LME gets squeezed again – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 13, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) – Aluminium hasn’t escaped the broader industrial metals rout. The London Metal Exchange (LME) aluminium price has on Friday morning touched $2,021.50 per tonne, its lowest level since April.

The “Russian Premium”, which resulted from the April 6 imposition of U.S. sanctions on Oleg Deripaska and his Russian aluminium empire Rusal, has been fully unwound.

The market is expecting sanctions to be lifted but aluminium’s slide is also part of a broader metals retreat as macro concerns trump micro narratives. That LME price, however, is for metal in three months time, a quirk of the London market that sets the global price benchmark.

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COLUMN-Beer versus aluminium; the U.S. battle-lines are drawn again – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 9, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) – The price of aluminium paid by consumers in the United States has risen sharply this year. This is not entirely surprising, given the imposition from the start of March of a 10-percent tariff on just about all imports of the metal.

But has the price risen too much? The Beer Institute, which represents the country’s more than 5,000 brewers, thinks so.

It has asked the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to “address potentially anticompetitive activities in the aluminum market that are driving up aluminum prices”. Thirty-two U.S. lawmakers think so as well.

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Trump’s Trade War Looms Over a Canadian Town Built to Supply America – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – June 28, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Arvida, Quebec, is part of a cross-border ecosystem responsible for the metal in three out of four American cars.

If ever a town embodied U.S.-Canadian symbiosis, it’s Arvida, Quebec. Built by Americans, its giant smelter supplied most of the Allied forces’ aluminum in World War II and today makes metal used in Budweiser beer cans, Tesla and Ford cars and in AR15 rifles, part of the 2.5 million metric tons that Canada sends over the border each year.

But now this corner of French-speaking Canada is in America’s cross hairs after the Trump administration’s shock move to tax metal from its closest ally under the pretext of national security.

“When you want to kill your dog, you will say he has rabies,” Mayor Josee Neron said in an interview. “To see one person destroy all that in just a blink of an eye, I think it’s too bad.”

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Time for Trudeau to cut the outrage over Trump’s antics and just cut a deal – by Diane Francis (Financial Post – June 19, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Imagine throwing a $600-million party and one of the guests leaves in a huff and then Twitter-trashes you all across the Pacific Ocean.

That’s what happened to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after he hosted the recent G7 extravaganza and was subsequently attacked by U.S. President Donald Trump.

But this isn’t the first of Trudeau’s trade missteps. He went to China and got the cold shoulder from Xi Jinping for a free trade deal, after snubbing Japan and its Trans-Pacific Partnership by missing a signing ceremony.

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Hidden aluminum stocks to be lured out by premiums, charges – by Eric Onstad (Reuters U.S. – June 12, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – High U.S. aluminum premiums and weaker returns from storage financing deals are likely to lure more metal onto the market from hidden inventories. The bulk of more than 10 million tonnes of global stocks of the metal, mainly used for transport and construction, are outside warehouses certified by exchanges, analysts estimate.

The additional material flowing from these unregulated storage areas could help to fill a gap and supply industrial consumers if U.S. sanctions on Russia’s Rusal remain.

An influx of material, however, could weigh on the market if the United States lifts restrictions on United Company Rusal, the biggest aluminum producer outside of China.

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Quebec backs aluminum, steel companies hit by U.S. tariffs – by Steven Chase (Globe and Mail – June 12, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Quebec is offering $100-million in loans and guarantees to steel and aluminum companies hit by recent U.S. tariffs, raising the possibility of trade complaints against Canadian firms.

Dominique Anglade, Quebec’s Economic Minister, told reporters in Montreal that the program came after aluminum and steel companies received feedback from clients who are not willing to pay the tariffs. “What they’re telling us is some of their contracts were cancelled,” she said, adding some had already slowed production.

Ten days ago, the United States imposed hefty tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports, characterizing shipments from Canada as a threat to national security. Over the weekend, the President threatened to impose 25-per-cent import taxes on foreign car and truck imports, a move that would devastate Canada’s auto industry.

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EU will act against U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum: Merkel – by Michael Nienaber (Reuters U.S. – June 10, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

BERLIN (Reuters) – Europe will implement counter-measures against U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum just like Canada, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, voicing regret about President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw support for a G7 communique.

Trump’s announcement on Twitter, after leaving the Group of Seven summit in Canada early, that he was backing out of the joint communique torpedoed what appeared to be a fragile consensus on a trade dispute between Washington and its top allies.

“The withdrawal, so to speak, via tweet is of course … sobering and a bit depressing,” Merkel said in an ARD television interview following the G7 summit.

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United Steelworkers: Metals tariffs are crucial to national security – by Leo W. Gerard (USA Today – June 10, 2018)

https://www.usatoday.com/

Leo W. Gerard is international president of the United Steelworkers.

The Trump administration’s steel tariffs are intended to staunch the flow of rust from closed American steel mills. The aluminum tariffs are designed to halt the rapid shuttering of American aluminum smelters.

Tens of thousands of steel and aluminum workers have lost their jobs over the past five years as subsidized metal from China glutted the world market, artificially forcing down prices.

The tariffs are not, however, a simple job-preservation measure. President Trump levied them to try to secure sufficient domestic production capacity of these vital metals for defense — for planes and tanks and for critical infrastructure.

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NEWS RELEASE: USW: Canada Must be Exempt from Tariffs (United Steelworkers – May 31, 2018)

https://www.usw.org/

CONTACT: Holly Hart, (202) 778-4384, hhart@usw.org

Today the United Steelworkers union (USW) expressed its profound disappointment in the Trump Administration’s decision to remove Canada’s exemption from Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum products.

This decision is unacceptable and calls into serious question the design and direction of the Administration’s trade policy. Section 232 relief is founded on national security interests and U.S. law. Our history shows that there is no stronger ally and partner on national security than Canada.

The decision not to exempt Canada ignores the fact that Canada’s steel and aluminum exports to the United States are fairly traded and that Canada has shown its willingness to strengthen its laws as well as its cooperation with the United States to fight unfair trade.

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