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WONDERING HOW NUTS TRUMP’S TARIFFS ARE? CONSIDER ALUMINUM.  
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Bill Saporito
September 2, 2026
The New York Times
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_ The Canadian aluminum industry hasn’t bilked the United States.
America needs aluminum to keep its auto plants running and to keep
food and drink prices down, and Canada is just better at making it. _

, Tobias Nicolai/Connected Archives

 

The list of Canadian imports now subject to 50 percent tariffs in the
United States includes steel, seaweed, ink, animal hides, dog leashes,
saddlery, suitcases, plywood, knit hats (toques, to Canadians),
floating docks, furniture, whiskey, honey and, of course, hockey
sticks. But the tariffs on aluminum show most starkly the
irrationality of President Trump’s trade war with our northern
neighbor.

Canada shipped nearly $10 billion
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in aluminum products to the United States last year. The metal is used
in construction, cars, furniture, drink cans and countless other
things. Mr. Trump has every obligation to enforce trade laws and
prevent other nations from taking unfair advantage of us. But the
Canadian aluminum industry hasn’t bilked the United States. America
needs aluminum to keep its auto plants running and to keep food and
drink prices down, and Canada is just better at making it.

Aluminum isn’t cooked like steel; it’s made from alumina, a powder
refined from bauxite ore and zapped with electricity until it renders
into a metal. The electric bill alone can account for up to 40 percent
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cost. When you think about trade with Canada, it’s useful to imagine
aluminum not as a metal but as electricity in solid form.

With its abundant snow, lakes and rivers, Canada has huge
hydroelectric power resources, often in sparsely populated areas. As a
result, the country has lots of reliable, inexpensive electricity,
which gives it an edge over the United States in aluminum smelting.
Today there are eight smelters operating in Quebec and one in British
Columbia, producing about 3.6 million tons of metal annually. The
United States gets 60 to 70 percent
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of its imported aluminum from Canada.

The United States tried to develop a competitive domestic aluminum
sector. It began to expand with the Tennessee Valley Authority, a
Depression-era project that was a model for rural electrification
initiatives across the country. Low-cost energy attracted increased
investment in aluminum smelters, like the one in Alcoa, Tenn., the
ultimate company town. Alcoa, founded in 1888 as the Pittsburgh
Reduction Company, became the biggest aluminum smelting operation in
the country. But the population grew after World War II, and in the
second half of the 20th century the energy crises helped flip the cost
calculus. Many American smelters shuttered.

Canada’s often less expensive, more reliable energy supply —
nobody’s moving into northern Quebec to compete for it — proved
decisive.

Since 1980, almost 30 American smelters have shut down, with companies
typically citing inadequate guarantees about the supply and price of
power as the reason. You can’t just hope that there’s enough juice
to run the smelter.

Alcoa led the retreat to Canada. The company today operates three
aluminum plants in Canada and has just two operational plants in the
United States. It’s looking to sell some 10 of its shuttered or
curtailed sites to the data center industry. One of its remaining
smelters, in Massena, N.Y., depends on a New York State allocation of
low-cost power and recently received several million dollars in
incentives. Alcoa is investing nearly $60 million in the plant through
2028. Canada might call that a state subsidy — cheating — but
without it, the company can’t operate competitively.

The closure of struggling American smelters means that the United
States must import — and that the cost of tariffs is destructive to
American industry. As of March, the automobile industry had paid more
than $35 billion since 2025, thanks to tariffs on aluminum, steel and
car parts and other items. This is money that carmakers could have
spent on research and development or lowering car prices.

Mr. Trump wants to reverse history and create domestic manufacturing
jobs in industries such as aluminum. He’s not the only one. The
dream of increasing well-paying manufacturing jobs was what inspired
states such as New York to shell out money to open factories and keep
them in business. Alcoa’s plant in Massena pays $37.71 an hour for a
general mechanic.

The president has largely failed, at least so far. Manufacturing jobs
have declined in his second term. On aluminum specifically, Mr. Trump
is promoting a $4 billion smelter in Oklahoma, backed by the United
Arab Emirates-based Emirates Global Aluminum and Century Aluminum,
along with $500 million in federal dollars and a couple of hundred
million in state incentives, including tax breaks. This factory might
get built, but few — if any — others will.

Even with all the incentives, building smelters in the United States
isn’t all that appealing. Our electric grid is in terrible shape,
electricity rates are rising, and the Trump administration is actively
discouraging new sources of power, such as renewables. And no one
knows whether Mr. Trump will waver on tariffs again. Try selling your
board of directors a multibillion-dollar, two- or three-year
investment on that basis. Emirates Global might be willing to shoulder
the risk, but few other companies are.

It’s not cheating when Canadians undersell American aluminum
producers. It’s an advantage. It’s logical for the United States
to import lower-cost Canadian aluminum and invest in industries in
which America enjoys its own advantages — chip design and artificial
intelligence, for instance.

Who would flout this logic, trashing a 150-plus-year relationship with
a close ally in a disruptive attempt to separate two interdependent
economies? Oh, right.

_Bill Saporito is an Opinion Editor for the New York Times._

* Trump tariffs
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* Canada
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* aluminum
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