The U.S. imported 235,222 tons of aluminium foil in 2015; China leads the list of exporters

The U.S. has a big market for aluminium foils as flexible packaging is one of the most profitable industries in the nation. According to the Aluminum Association, the aluminium foil market is worth about $5 billion, and about 36% of it is supplied by imports, up from only 16% in 2007.

As an interesting observation, net U.S. exports of aluminium sheets, plates, and foil displayed a generally upward trend from 2007 to 2013. However, after that, the trend started shifting resulting in a fall almost three times larger in value in last 2 years.

Let’s analyse the trends in aluminium foil trades in the U.S. in last two years. The U.S. imported 240,673 tons of aluminium foil in 2016 as compared to 235,222 tons of aluminium foil in 2015. The amount of import remains flat in last two years. Simultaneously, the U.S. exported 114,122 tons of aluminium foil in 2016 as compared to 109,412 tons in 2015 showing a slight increase.  In last two years, US import of foil is more than two times of the amount of foil exported by the country.

The leading exporter of foil to U.S. is China, whose foil shipments to the U.S. have increased almost 10-fold, to 132,500 tons in the last decade. In 2015, China exported 150,265 tons of aluminium foil to US in comparison to 122,284 tons in 2014. The estimated export of aluminium foil by China to US amounted to 158,875 tons in 2016. We can see the constant growth of import from China in these three years. China accounted for more than half of the total aluminium foil imported by the U.S. during this period and the amount is increasing.

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Interestingly, in 2015, the U.S. had imported 13787 tons of aluminium foils from Armenia and that dropped significantly to 5444 tons in 2016.

Another major exporter of aluminium foil to the U.S. is Canada that exported 15803 tons of aluminium foil to US in 2016, in comparison to 13528 tons in 2016.

It is apparent that China is slowly taking over the U.S. downstream market after crippling the primary aluminium industry to a large extent. There is a huge demand for aluminium products from the automotive, packaging and aerospace industries in the U.S. leading to flooding of cheaper and highly subsidized products from China. The U.S. policymakers are trying to protect the domestic industry by levying strict import duties on Chinese products. After the recent allegations by the U.S. producers and aluminium associations about circumvention of antidumping and countervailing duties by Chinese producers and investigations by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the domestic scenario is expected to change for better.

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