Trump says UAE's aluminium sector is 'talk of the industry'

President encourages more businesses to set up in tariff-free US

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US President Donald Trump said the UAE's aluminium sector is "the talk" of the industry, after the country's biggest producer of the metal announced an expansion into America, while touting the tariff-free business environment in the Emirates.

Emirates Global Aluminium, the UAE’s largest industrial company outside the oil and gas sector, on Thursday announced it would develop a $4 billion primary aluminium smelter project in Oklahoma. It was among several agreements announced during the final leg of Mr Trump's Gulf tour.

Construction of the plant, which EGA says will be the first new primary aluminium production plant in the US since 1980, is to begin in 2026. Production capacity is expected to be 600,000 tonnes of the metal annually, nearly doubling US output, EGA said in a statement on Friday.

That would also address America's domestic availability of the material, as an estimated 85 per cent of the aluminium needs of US industries, from automotive to aviation and construction, are currently supplied by imports, the company added.

Mr Trump heaped praise on the aluminium announcement and took the opportunity to laud tariff-free manufacturing in the world's biggest economy.

"There's really nothing like it. The global aluminium from the Emirates has been the talk of the aluminium business," he said, in reference to EGA, at the US-UAE business forum in Abu Dhabi on Friday.

"They're very big with aluminium and now they're going to be spending a tremendous amount of money in one of my favourite places, Oklahoma ... just build your plant inside the US and you have no tariffs, and that's exactly what they're doing. That's what many, many companies are doing."

US President Donald Trump at the UAE-US Business Dialogue in Abu Dhabi on May 16. AFP

EGA's investment pledge is part of deals Mr Trump expects to be worth between $12 trillion and $13 trillion.

“There's never been anything like what's happening right now to the US. We're at a level that no country has seen," he said.

He added that, after the US secured trade agreements with the UK and China, 150 countries want to make a deal with Washington.

“At a certain point, over the next two to three weeks, we will be sending letters out, essentially telling people what they'll be paying to do business in the US," the President said. “They could appeal it but, for the most part, I think we're going to be very fair.”

The governor of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, said EGA’s new plant will be "the heart of a broader hub for strategic industry" in the state that will create jobs, "as well as enhancing economic resilience and national security for all Americans".

The US is already one of EGA’s largest single country markets globally, with aluminium fabricators using EGA metal across the country, it said. EGA America, the company’s US distributor, has its headquarters in St Louis, Missouri.

The company already has US recycled aluminium production capacity through its 80 per cent shareholding in EGA Spectro Alloys in Rosemount, Minnesota, acquired last year.

EGA is investing to expand the current 110,000 tonnes per year of recycled foundry capacity with 55,000 tonnes of recycled billet capacity.