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The US Commerce Department announced on Friday that it will impose “immediate” preliminary anti-dumping duties on imports of aluminum foil from 18 countries, including Romania, but also from Germany, Bahrain, Brazil, Spain, India and Italy, reports AFP.
In all, “these are $ 1.96 billion worth of goods and they make up a pretty large percentage of the nation’s total aluminum industry,” US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in an interview. Fox Business.
“Final decisions will be made in February 2021,” after the presidential election, said Donald Trump’s minister, adding that it will be the US International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent organization, that will make the final decision.
For now, these preliminary fees will be charged “immediately.”
He also indicated that the country most affected by these new tariffs would be Germany, followed by Bahrain, with research showing that these two countries are the ones that most subsidize their prices to export them to the United States.
These taxes also cover Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Oman, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey.
Wilbur Ross also noted that China is not on this list because “a large amount of taxes have already been imposed on its aluminum products.”
“So what really happened was that the Chinese excess capacity was dumped into other markets,” he said.
The imposition of punitive tariffs on aluminum in spring 2018 marked the beginning of the trade war with Beijing.
This conflict has caused a decrease in the trade deficit with the Asian giant, but the flows have shifted with higher imports from Mexico, for example.
In a press release, the Commerce Department said that since the beginning of Donald Trump’s term, it has initiated 286 investigations, 267% more than in the same period of the previous term.
