Us Considers Adding Tariff On Aluminum Imports From Russia

Us Considers Adding Tariff On Aluminum Imports From Russia by Andrew Blumer last updated on March 10, 2023

US Considers Adding 200% Tariff On Aluminum Imports From Russia

According to reports, the United States of America is now thinking of adding a 200% traffic duty on aluminum imports from Russia. This will be among a growing list of actions taken by the USA to pressure Moscow & to make it stop its war in Ukraine.

However, this new tariff measure on Russia is still in the pipeline, and there is no official statement as of now. But a US official did confirm that any tariff like this was not expected, at least for this week.

Russia's Aluminum Is Hurting American Companies

It seems that Russia's war with Ukraine is not the only reason why the US would want to impose a 200% tariff on Russian Aluminium.

Recently, Russia has dumped a huge amount of Aluminium in the USA market at a very low cost. This step is hurting the US-based companies as they can't compete against such low prices.

When the US Commerce Department and the Trade Representative Office of the USA were contacted for comments, they were not immediately available.

For now, there is no clear policy about how the Biden administration will proceed with the higher tariffs. In addition, adding such high tariffs will require an in-depth investigation that can easily take several months.

But we can't ignore the fact that the prices of Russian Aluminium are helping to lower inflation in the USA. For starters, the Aluminum price on the London Metal Exchange was around $4,073/tonne in 2022. And now, the same metal is worth only $2411 - $2500/tonne.

However, there's another development worth mentioning here about the USA and Russian Aluminum. Around 5 years ago, the USA was heavily dependent on Aluminium from Russia, but that's no longer the case. A look at the US Aluminum imports from Russia reveals that it has fallen from 443 million pounds to only 1.65 million pounds.

In other words, the USA is getting around 3% of its Aluminum from Russia, which is a very small amount.