A southeast Missouri aluminum plant, saved in 2018 by former President Donald Trump’s tariffs on aluminum imports, after having closed in 2016 under former President Obama, is now set to shut down under President Joe Biden.
This week, executives at Magnitude 7 Metals (Mag7) in New Madrid County, Missouri announced that the aluminum plant will again close its doors, with about 500 American workers set to be laid off by the end of the month.
“Pray for us man. [Mag7] was a good job, I just hate how it folded how it did,” employee Chavis Goodwin told Heartland News. “… it’s a lot of people that depended on this job and a lot of families that are about to be hurt behind this.”
Mag7 is just one of only a handful of remaining aluminum plants in the United States thanks to job-killing free trade policy for decades that has wiped out the industry in the nation’s heartland.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) is calling on Biden to intervene and save the aluminum plant from closure by invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950. Hawley cites the increasing gutting of the nation’s domestic aluminum supply chains.
“Not only is this development a devastating blow to working families and good-paying union jobs in my state, but it directly threatens the national economic security of the United States. This smelter accounts for nearly 30 percent of the nation’s primary aluminum production,” Hawley writes to Biden:
Magnitude 7 Metals is one of three primary aluminum manufacturers in the United States and operates one of handful of active smelters nationwide. Its annual production capacity is 263,000 metric tons, which accounts for almost 30 percent of the nation’s overall capacity, according to some estimates. As you know, primary aluminum is used in various industrial goods, including aircraft, automobiles, solar panels, and many types of military equipment. The Department of Defense has deemed aluminum a strategic material of interest mainly because of the latter. [Emphasis added]
Primary aluminum production has declined in the United States during the past two decades— catastrophically. As recently as 2000, the United States ranked as the world’s largest producer of primary aluminum. However, the United States now accounts for less than 2 percent of global primary aluminum. This steep production decline results from several factors, including state-led overproduction in China that has led Chinese aluminum manufacturers to dump subsidized aluminum into global markets, thereby depressing the commodity’s price and undermining U.S. manufacturers’ financial viability. [Emphasis added]
The precipitous decline of the primary aluminum industry and the importance of aluminum for U.S. national security informed the Trump Administration’s decision to impose 10 percent tariffs on aluminum products, pursuant to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. However, in the past 18 months, two other primary aluminum smelters have been curtailed, one in Washington and another in Kentucky. The curtailment of Magnitude 7 Metal’s smelter makes a third. It’s clear more must be done to stabilize and revitalize the nation’s primary aluminum industry. [Emphasis added]
The aluminum plant shuttered under Obama in 2016 because it could not compete with cheap Chinese aluminum that was being dumped in the U.S. market. Then, in 2018, Trump helped reopen the plant with his steel and aluminum tariffs.
Now, under Biden, the plant will again see its doors close. In December 2021, Biden announced he was exempting European Union (EU) countries from Trump’s aluminum tariffs. Last month, he said EU countries would be exempted from the tariffs for another two years.
As Hawley noted, an aluminum plant in Whatcom County, Washington, similarly closed last year, as well as an aluminum plant in Hancock County, Kentucky, which saw nearly 1,000 American workers laid off from their jobs.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has carefully researched the impact that free trade policy has had on America’s working and middle class communities, and more specifically, the nation’s aluminum industry.
“Between 2010 and 2017, 18 of 23 domestic aluminum smelters shut down production, eliminating roughly 13,000 good jobs,” EPI researchers detailed. “By 2016, the U.S. industry was down to three aluminum refineries; by 2017, only one remained in operation.”
Thanks to Trump’s tariffs on aluminum imports, EPI researchers stated, the industry was revived with more production, more investment, and more jobs added as a result. In many cases, plants like Mag7, reopened after having shuttered.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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