{ "error": "", "type": "text", "title": "Secretary Ross's Op-Ed: Our National Security Depends on a Healthy Aluminum Industry", "slug": "secretary-rosss-op-ed-our-national-security-depends-on-a-healthy-aluminum-industry", "text": "
\"For years, the Federal Government failed to take strong action, allowing the United States aluminum sector and its ability to support our armed forces to severely erode. By the end of 2016, the American primary aluminum business was almost wiped out by these practices.<\/p>\n
While this critical industry closed one smelter after another, the Chinese and other foreign governments were subsidizing millions of tons of new production capacity.<\/p>\n
China, which produced 2.4 million metric tons of aluminum in 2000, increased its output to 36 million metric tons in 2017, an astonishing 1,390 percent increase and almost 49 times more than the United States aluminum production. At over $11 trillion, China\u2019s economy is far smaller than the United States economy ($18 trillion), yet it produces 49 times the amount of aluminum.<\/p>\n
Had the growth of aluminum production mirrored the ten-fold increase in China\u2019s GDP over that period, then total Chinese primary aluminum production should have increased to 24 million tons, not 36 million tons. Globally, 63 million metric tons of aluminum were produced in 2017, with the United States accounting for a scant one percent of global output. By the end of 2016, what remained of this sector was under intense market pressure to close its last remaining smelters.\"<\/p>", "quote": null, "citation": "