Minnesota Extruder Alexandria Industries Supports Trade Case to Save Jobs
Alexandria Industries of west central Minnesota started making aluminum boat parts for Lund and typewriter parts for IBM in the 1960s. Today, the aluminum extruder makes products used every day, but not as many of them as it did just two years ago, largely because of unfairly priced competition from abroad.
“Pricing pressures have become significant,” said Steve Schabel, Alexandria’s president. “A Chinese company has been selling aluminum extrusions to one of our customers for less than we can buy our raw aluminum input for.”
Schabel hopes the federal government will step in to impose tariffs and duties that will erase the artificial advantage that China and 13 other countries have over domestic manufacturers like his. The future of the company and its employees are at stake.
Aluminum extrusions are made by pressing heated aluminum alloy through a steel die to make various shapes. The result: extrusions that are lightweight, strong, corrosion resistant, and recyclable. The shapes produced are used in everyday items including patio furniture, window frames, automobiles, medical equipment, and solar panel mountings to name a few.
U.S.-based extruders like family-owned Alexandria Industries should be growing because of increased demand; from 2020 to 2023, demand for aluminum extrusions in America rose by 26 percent. But U.S. extruders’ sales and profits declined due to the illegally low-priced trade. Foreign producers have been selling extrusions at cut-rate prices into the U.S., squeezing out U.S. manufacturers. Alexandria Industries’ manufacturing facilities employed 625 workers in 2022 and now employ a little over 400.
“It’s critically important for the trade case to succeed,” Schabel said. “Our people are concerned about their futures.”
Some customer demands have greatly decreased after booming during the pandemic. For example, production of medical ventilators and recreational boats have declined. Particularly when combined with these declines in demand, the unfair imports have taken a major toll. This is the case throughout the extrusions market, including for extrusions used in building and construction, renewable energy products, and automotive uses, including the critically important crash-relevant extrusions market. Alexandria has recently made significant investment to produce a variety of sophisticated, tight-toleranced extrusions which could also include crash relevant automotive parts, and it is vital that unfair imports are not permitted to continue to flood that market.
U.S. extruders and their workers cannot be beaten on a level playing field. But foreign countries must use fair trade practices and refrain from undercutting American manufacturers through dumping and subsidies.
Schabel says the U.S. government should intervene to safeguard U.S. jobs like those in Minnesota and at Alexandria Industries. He stands with the coalition of 14 aluminum extruders and the United Steelworkers union that are urging the federal government to impose antidumping and countervailing tariffs as required by law.
The tariffs will stop the industry’s painful decline and protect Minnesota jobs.
