Canada Shifts $4,000-Per-Tonne Aluminum to Europe as Trump's Tariff Strategy Crumbles

By The Decision Room

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In June, Trump doubled the tariff on Canadian aluminum to 50%. Within weeks, one of Canada's biggest smelters was shipping 57% of its output to Europe instead of the US — up from just 4% before the tariff. Exports to the Netherlands jumped 74%. Italy nearly doubled. Poland quadrupled. Trump built a wall to keep Canadian metal out. Canadian metal walked right around it. Then, just as this looked like a clean win for Canada, something stranger happened. By May, Rio Tinto's shipments to the US had rebounded to roughly 80% of pre-tariff levels — because American prices, inflated by the very tariff meant to punish Canada, climbed high enough to pull the metal back home anyway. And Rio Tinto started doing something almost nobody predicted: buying OTHER companies' aluminum and reselling it into the tariff-protected US market, because being a middleman inside the wall became more profitable than shipping its own metal around it. Quebec produces ~90% of Canada's aluminum, and Canada supplies

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