A senior member of the Donald Trump cabinet has accused Australia of dumping cheap aluminum in the United States as a justification for its 25 percent import rates.
While the US has a commercial surplus with Australia, the American trade secretary Howard Lutnick Australia has accused the overflowing of the United States with cheap aluminum in an attempt to undermine American manufacturers.
“Look, you have dumpers in the rest of the world,” he told Fox Business.
“Japan dumps steel. China dumps steel. What that means is, they make it, they produce over produce and they sell the dirt cheaply to drive our boys bankrupt
“The president is here to protect American employees. He is here to protect the American industry. We are going to stop that nonsense and bring steel here.
'So this concept that, oh, prices will rise … You have to remember that President Trump is playing for the power of America.
'We are not going to stand for China, dumping, dumping Japan or Australia does a lot of aluminum under the costs.
“This must end and the president is over.”
A senior member of the Donald Trump cabinet has accused Australia of dumping cheap aluminum in the United States as a justification for 25 percent import rates
World Trade Organization Rules only allow rates under limited circumstances, including to stop dumping, with one exporting country flooding another with cheap input.
However, aluminum was only 1.6 percent of Australia exports to the United States in 2025, in a trade worth $ 400 million.
Dr. Naoise McDonagh, a geopolitics and international trading expert at Edith Cowan University, said that Mr Lutnick's claims about the Australian aluminum export in fact had no basis.
“Lutnick's remark that there has been dumped is not substantiated,” he said Daily Mail Australia.
The Australian government do not subsidize Tomago aluminum directly in Newcastle to produce the lightweight metal cheaply.
But last month President Trump claimed that the import of the American aluminum from Australia was much higher compared to his first term in the White House.
“The volume of the American import of the primary aluminum from Australia has also risen,” he said in a proclamation associated with the order of the executive rate.
'In 2024 [it] Was about 103 percent higher than the average volume for 2015 to 2017.
“Australia has its verbal commitment to voluntarily limit his aluminum export.”
The rate of 25 percent on steel and aluminum was taken into operation on Wednesday, with Australia being not an exemption in contrast to 2018.
The rate was imposed despite the American trading surplus with Australia dating from 1952, where Australia buys more goods from the US than they buy from us.
The Australian steel maker Bluescope will escape the rate because it already produces steel in Ohio.
Dr. Patricia Ranald, an expert in the field of public policy at the School of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Sydney, said that Australia could go to the World Trade Organization to appeal at 25 percent rates for Australian steel and aluminium.
But she said that the dispute settlement would only enable Australia to answer with equivalent rates if the WTO thought the US was wrong.
“They violate the rules because the US has concluded an agreement not to increase rates in the context of his WTO agreements,” she said Daily Mail Australia.
“If you take a dispute and it is a valid dispute, then the country has imposed the rates, if they lose the dispute, the other country has the right to place rates of equal value to them.”
The rates also violate the Free Trade Agreement of Australia-Senigent States that came into force in 2005.
“Both the WTO agreements and the American Australia free trade agreement are legally binding,” said Dr. Ranald.
