ALUMINUM: Bundles for U.S.A.

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As angry as a loser in a sharp horse trade, the U.S. aluminum industry last week focused its wrath on the Economic Cooperation Administration. The U.S., said the industry, was getting the short end of a very sharp deal.

EGA had allocated $26 million to Western European nations to buy aluminum. They had been using the dollars to buy Canadian ingots at 16¢ a lb. This gave the Europeans a surplus of aluminum. They shipped the metal to the U.S.—where there is a shortage—in the form of scrap. U.S. fabricators were paying as high as 25¢ a lb. for their European scrap.

Between April and September, eight EGA countries had shipped 45 million lbs. of aluminum to the U.S. (almost half of it came from the United Kingdom), and shipments were increasing every month. Furthermore, other large European shipments were finding their way into Russia and satellite countries, and European traders were raking in big profits on the deals. At week's end, EGA sadly admitted that all this was true, said it had taken steps to stop it. EGA said the United Kingdom had already agreed to cut down its Canadian buying by the amount of aluminum sold to the U.S.