MethodologyContact usSupportLogin
Key takeaways:
“From the end of last year, we were already in a 10% tariff environment, which was established during the first Trump administration. We felt that he was coming in with a tariff agenda,” Lucy Winchel, director of aluminium for Traxys Global, said during the Aluminium Roundtable on Friday September 12.
“Quickly in his second administration, in March, the tariff went up to 25%. The real shocker came in June when he raised it to 50%. This is historic in the industry. We’ve never had tariffs this high,” Winchel added.
Following the June tariff hike, the Midwest premium has risen to historic highs. Fastmarkets assessed the daily aluminium P1020A premium, ddp Midwest US at 74.00-76.00 cents per lb on Wednesday September 17, up from 73.00-75.50 cents per lb on Friday.
“All year, we’re kind of on edge and waiting to see if anything will change on the current tariff levels. But so far it hasn’t,” Winchel said. “It’s historic, it’s a unique time. No matter how long we’ve been in the industry, none of us has faced this scenario before.”
Pricing at the moment is “difficult to negotiate,” an attendee said on Thursday September 11, and that it’s “hard to gauge market sentiment” with current levels of uncertainty.
“I don’t see [the market] as a win-win for anyone this year,” the attendee said.
The tariffs and resulting market complications were the main basis of most discussions at the ReMA Roundtables, with panel discussions including the changing trade policies under the Trump administration, and Daniel Matthews, director of industrial competitiveness from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), speaking on Thursday.
“Right now USTR [is] actively engaged in discussions with various trading partners to address the large and persistent annual goods trade deficit that the United States has with several countries”, following President Trump’s determination that this deficit “constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security and the economy of the United States,” Matthews said.
This idea of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” was reiterated by Matthews, who said that the aim of USTR regarding country-specific tariffs and ongoing negotiations is to “address some of those tariff and non-tariff barriers and unfair trading practices” that the administration believes contributed to such a threat.
Through these actions, “the president is determined to revitalize American manufacturing […] he does want to bring back primary aluminium smelting” capacity to the US, Matthews said.
However, Adam Schaffer, vice president of international trade and global affairs at ReMA said during the same discussion that these actions taken by the Trump administration are “all happening really quickly and I know that it’s tough for everybody to keep up.”
The primary aluminium premium, “which is totally driven by various costs of transportation, financing and bringing the goods from wherever they’re coming from,” Winchel said, also has to cover the tariff costs, and, as a result of current 232 tariffs, has shot up over the past year.
Echoing conversations since the first Section 232 hike in March, Winchel and other attendees have said the Midwest premium for P1020A has flown below the cost to replace inventory.
President Trump has imposed tariffs on aluminium imports to protect and bolster the American aluminium sector; however, industry leaders have voiced that long-term investments cannot be made on tariffs alone.
“I think the government simply thought that might happen, and this would encourage additional smelting capacity to either reopen here or start back up again, but it’s not practical because you need assurances that the prices will stay at a certain level,” Winchel said.
These assurances have been slow to come with changing policies, Marc Schupan, CEO of Schupan and Sons, noted during the aluminium roundtable.
“We’re watching this on a daily basis, we’re holding our breath trying to make the best we can, trying to control inventories, trying to keep things moving,” Schupan said. “But tomorrow, the US president could say, ‘Canada, we love you again and instead of 50%, we’re at 20%.’ They say they’re not going to do it, but you’ve seen what’s been going on.”
Meanwhile, sources at the conference questioned whether scrap tariffs could be coming, including discussing the recent effects of proposed copper tariffs that led to historically wide arbitrage levels between Comex and London Metal Exchange pricing.
For primary aluminium, Winchel said, “the Canadians won’t abandon the US market completely, the producers would like to keep their market share here. Eventually, something has to happen with price, to incentivize them to come to the US for next year because we will really need that metal.”
Approximately two-thirds of US primary aluminium is imported from Canada. Currently, aluminium scrap is not subject to the 50% tariffs.
“There’s much more scrap available in the US, so that’s been very good for the scrap side of the market. All the mills are happy they have that, at least. That’s probably also tempering the additional cost of the primary aluminium,” Winchel said.
Other sources disagreed with this notion. A primary aluminium source said on September 10 that it’s “not an easy button to push, to convert scrap” into material primary consumers can use in place of P1020A. It’s “not simply about getting scrap in the country,” the source added.
Between January-July 2025, the US imported 549,313 tons of aluminium scrap, up by 30% from January-July 2024, according to the latest data from the US Commerce Department. Of that, the largest increase was imports of used beverage cans (UBCs), which were up by 50% to 185,094 tons imported, up from 123,226.
Of those tons, 65% came from Canada and Mexico, 6.05% came from the United Kingdom, 5.46% from Guatemala and 4.14% from Colombia. Across all aluminium scrap categories, Canada and Mexico accounted for nearly 85% of all imports from January-July 2025.
Besides current scrap exceptions to the section 232 tariffs, imports from Canada and Mexico have been exempt from tariffs as being included in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). But that agreement is due to undergo a formal review in July 2026.
“There is, in particular sections, interest in looking at ways in which we can really strengthen the USMCA,” Matthews said, and that “ultimately, what we want to do is ensure the USMCA is effective for all US manufacturers and other interested stakeholders,” though he did not provide specifics on how scrap trade might be directly impacted.
The export side of aluminium scrap, excluding UBCs, rose by 9.42% over the first seven months of the year to 1,221,105 tons, up from 1,115,952 tons over the first seven months of 2025.
Conference attendees said that export markets have been “surprisingly strong” despite domestic market uncertainty.
Amidst largely bearish sentiments, there were still signs of optimism.
Aurubis’ new US facility in Georgia is now “fully constructed,” Naveed Moghadam, Commercial Director at Aurubis Richmond, said at the copper roundtable on Thursday, with the first melt expected to begin “in a couple of weeks.”
Matthews also spoke on Century Aluminium, which announced its decision, in early August, to restart the last 50,000 tonnes of capacity at its Mt Holly smelter in South Carolina by June 30, 2026.
Century is also in the process of identifying a location for its new smelter, which has the potential to become the first primary aluminium smelter built in the US in over 45 years. However, Century is held back by identifying affordable energy, which represents the most significant cost of smelting.
Overall, conference attendees were still left with a complicated market and murky paths forward.
“My main takeaway from ReMA [Roundtables] is that primary people have more questions than answers. There’s a lot of uncertainty and no one knows anything,” a US-based primary aluminium trader said.
The primary aluminium trader said market uncertainty is related to tariffs. Despite uncertainty, the trader said they think the tariffs are here to stay at the current 50% level.
What’s next for the global aluminium market? Stay ahead of the curve with market-reflective aluminium price data and charts.