ABSTRACT
Although the 1920s gave aluminium a great spurt in terms of consumption and production, this period corresponded as well to a rather deregulated phase for this industry. Differently from the past, the US producer (ALCOA) was not a member of the cartel, even though former scholarly studies often presented it as a ‘silent partner’ of cartelisation. This chapter offers a more nuanced interpretation of the complex relationships between the two sides of the aluminium world, arguing that their lack of cohesion was a main cause of a certain over-investment. While the Europeans started as early as 1923 to negotiate the renewing of a cartel agreement, which was finally settled in 1926, and succeeded in including VAW in the network, ALCOA refused to take part to these discussions. The fear of antitrust pursuits played an important role; yet the firm’s own strategies of national and international expansion, such as the investment in gigantic new outputs in Canada, were preponderant to this interplay.
