Aluminum firms in Canada see death of U.S. sales as tariffs bite

Canada’s aluminum fabricators say their sales to the United States will get wiped out as the Trump administration’s latest tariff measures make their products uncompetitive south of the border.

Aluminum products are among the items the U.S. included for 50 per cent levies imposed on Tuesday as part of its escalating dispute with Canada following last month’s breakdown in trade talks. The latest move ends tariff exemptions for some goods made with the lightweight metal, leaving them with a 100 per cent levy when added to the 50 per cent U.S. tariff rate imposed on foreign supplies last year.

For companies such as Apex Aluminum Extrusions Ltd., President Donald Trump’s move makes their Canadian-made products uncompetitive compared to their American counterparts. The British Columbia-based manufacturer, which makes aluminum parts for the construction industry and data centres, gets about 40 per cent of its sales from the U.S.

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“Our U.S. business is dead,” chief financial officer Darren McQueen said in an interview. “There will be nothing more crossing the border.”

The painful new metal tariff was part of an annex published by the White House on Sept. 8 at the same time as the Trump administration announced it would ban some Canadian products including alcohol and dairy, escalating the neighbours’ trade war.

AluQuebec, an industry group that advocates for aluminum firms across Quebec’s supply chain, estimates that more than $600 million in Canadian annual exports to the U.S. are associated with the newly targeted products, which include aluminum bars and pipes. That’s roughly a fifth of all Canadian shipments of non-primary aluminum products to the U.S., it said.

“This latest round of price hikes significantly changes the landscape for small- and medium-sized enterprises in the aluminum sector, particularly those that produce extrusions,” AluQuebec head Charlotte Laramée said in an emailed statement. “With tariffs that could reach 100 per cent, the very ability of many of our companies to continue exporting to the United States is being called into question.”