President Donald Trump announced that Emirates Global Aluminum (EGA) — the world’s largest producer of ‘premium aluminum’ — will invest $4 billion to build an aluminum smelter project in the state of Oklahoma.
According to the White House it will be “one of the first new aluminum smelters in America in 45 years.” The Trump administration says that it “will create a thousand jobs in America” and “double current U.S. production capacity.”
Note: EGA, which is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is owned by the state-owned investment firm Mubadala Investment Company, which acts as one of the sovereign wealth funds of the government of Abu Dhabi, and Investment Corporation of Dubai, the principal investment arm of the Government of Dubai.
Republican Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt is amplifying Trump’s announcement on X and added: “Couldn’t be happier to have them here,” with the hashtag #MadeInUSA.
Oklahoma is open for business.
EGA is setting up shop in Oklahoma and investing $4 billion in our state. This means thousands of jobs for hardworking Oklahomans.
Couldn’t be happier to have them here.#MadeInUSA https://t.co/1UMU6MHE4F
— Governor Kevin Stitt (@GovStitt) May 15, 2025
According to the Oklahoma Department of Commerce: “The facility will be located on more than 350 acres at the Tulsa Port of Inola, a 2,200-acre industrial park with access to rail, barge transportation and global waterways. Once complete, the facility will be the largest of its kind in the U.S., producing billets, sheet ingots, high-purity aluminum, and foundry alloys.”
Today, we announced the progression of plans to develop the first new primary aluminium production plant in the United States of America since 1980. Construction of EGA’s American primary aluminium plant is expected to begin after a feasibility study and by the end of 2026, with… pic.twitter.com/HEMRpyYgyM
— Emirates Global Aluminium (@egaofficial) May 16, 2025
EGA reported: “Construction of EGA’s American primary aluminum plant is expected to begin after a feasibility study and by the end of 2026, with first hot metal by the end of the decade. The plant will be located in Oklahoma, subject to the finalization of a competitive long-term power supply and State and local investment incentives and tax credit arrangements.”
While most of the aluminum smelting in the U.S. creates secondary aluminum which uses scrap like recycled aluminum cans as source material, primary aluminum — the kind to be produced by the new Oklahoma facility — requires bauxite as a source material. The U.S. produces less than 1% of the global supply of bauxite, which is chiefly sourced from Australia, Guinea, China, Jamaica, Brazil, India and elsewhere.
While creating jobs in Oklahoma, the new facility will also require the importing of vast quantities of bauxite as raw material for primary aluminum production, fueling trade imbalances with mineral-rich nations like Australia and Jamaica that supply it.
The enterprise, with its foreign ownership, American workers, trade deficit impact and import/export calculus, is a telling example of how interconnected global commerce is in the 21st century, and the various challenges this presents to the America First playbook of the Trump administration.
Primary aluminum smelting is also far more costly than the work done to produce secondary aluminum, requiring nearly ten times as much electricity. The U.S. currently imports most of its aluminum from Canada.