Duty Worth Half the Metal

By Dot Kessler. From MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 41.

In the first eight months of 2026, the estimated duty on aluminum mill products entering the United States, the sheet, plate, bar, tube, wire and foil that other plants cut and form, came to about 52 cents for every dollar they were worth. In the same months of 2024 it came to about 5 cents.

Buyers kept buying. In MFG Calcs’ tariff-effect study, nine other kinds of imported goods, steel fasteners among them, saw their average duty climb 10 percentage points or more in a year, and imports of each fell in value from the year before the climb to the year after. Imports of aluminum mill products, after a climb that steep, rose by about two-fifths.

A Texas primary metal manufacturer gave the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas one reason in May: “The administration’s April proclamation requiring importers of aluminum products to pay Section 232 tariffs on the full value of the aluminum content, including the Midwest Premium, has already helped spur some domestic onshoring activity. However, certain foreign extrusion companies continue exporting into the United States while absorbing the tariff costs and still pricing below domestic producers.”

Dollars can overstate the buying, because customs value rises with the metal’s price. Tons do not, but our data weigh imports only by the year. In 2025 the tonnage matched 2024’s to within a tenth of a percent, and on the average metric ton, worth about the same in both years, the estimated duty rose from about $250 to about $1,400. In dollars, this year’s first eight months ran 44% above the same months of 2025; those tons are not in yet.

Read it in the magazine

• MFGCalcs Magazine, Issue 1, November 2026, page 41