That doesn’t negate the fact that he already introduced tariffs on aluminum in 2018.

Trump administration imposed tariffs on EU steel in March 2025

I don’t know how old your linked article is, as it’s behind a paywall, but according to different sources aluminum US tariffs on aluminum were already implemented or increased in June 2018.

Did China also impose tariffs on EU steel in the meantime? Or, why should chinese companies copy the american companies?

The EU Packaging Waste Regulation laws which demand higher recycling rates were enacted in 2025. So considering the 2018s tariffs, US companies had reasons to import aluminum scrap for 7 more years. The increases in available scrap and on tariffs in 2025 surely strengthened this though.

That’s all very interesting, so if the your linked article is older, does that mean Chinese companies are copying US ones on this? Or maybe it’s not as simple as that. Either way, to me it sounds like the Indian-owned US subsidiary Novelis has created facilities in Europe and did not account for aluminum scrap getting bought up by other companies.

The TL;DR is misleading. The EU has not “started to recycle aluminum”. It had already done so for a long long time. I feel like the TL;DR also singles out China, seeing as it fails to mention that US companies are also increasingly importing scrap.

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

To me that seems like a bold claim considering “the divine right of kings” has not been successfully resisted nor was it escaped from. Monarchies still exist on every continent, people of royalty still get more rights and better treatment than others, once-royal families still possess loads of wealth, still rule countries in high political positions, still own many companies and other wealth generating assets. Humans have gained unfair advantages due to their lineage for thousands if not tens of thousands of years and I highly doubt that this will change massively in the next thousand years.

Regardless, it still sounds like a really nice speech though.