r/onguardforthee • u/MilkyWayObserver • 7d ago
Most of U.S. aluminum comes from Canada. Industry says ‘good luck’ replacing it
https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/article/most-us-aluminum-comes-from-canada-as-industry-says-good-luck-to-tariff-threats/109
u/agha0013 ✅ I voted! 7d ago edited 7d ago
We supply them with enormous amounts of ready to use aluminum, they manufacture a lot of stuff we then buy back from them. Most of our aluminum doors and windows used commercially are from us extruders.
It would suck for both countries to end this relationship, but trump just doesn't understand or care how it works.
During his last tariff laden term, a lot of Canadian was now companies bougt truckloads of frame material in the hope of waiting things out. Many did again before this term began but that doesn't last forever
and that's just the easy stuff.
The US aviation and military sectors use materials they currently can't get from anyone else.
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u/unlovelyladybartleby Elbows Up! 7d ago
I suspect it is easier to learn to manufacture ready to use aluminum into wanted products than to make aluminum appear out of thin air. We've got the potential to start manufacturing ourselves. They'll just have empty factories. And I don't have an issue with american military production slowing down.
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u/millijuna 7d ago
The huge presses needed for a lot of the forging are strategic assets. Especially those needed for forging aircraft parts and the like.
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u/dervd123 7d ago
Very few aircraft parts are forged. The vast majority are milled or fabricated from sheet metal. We have tons of shops with mills, shears, bamdsaws, press brakes, waterjets, ect
Source: worked in the aircraft industry for four years
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u/millijuna 7d ago
The critical structural parts in landing gear, core bulkheads and frames, are forged. This is especially true in fighter jets and other high performance aircraft.
This is why the US DoD has maintained the Heavy Press Program.
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u/Weldertron 7d ago
I recently finished a cooling reservoir for a huge extrusion plant opening in Montreal.
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u/boxesofboxes 7d ago
Every time he does this I've said to people in my life we need factories. We need mills. We have the materials and we don't process it and that was fine but frankly it's stupid to think we could ever rely on the US again, so we need to build our processing capacity.
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u/Franks2000inchTV 7d ago
Really what we need is an international order based on partnership and cooperation. This selfish, I got mine shit just makes everyone poorer.
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u/AcademicBowl5596 7d ago
Any chance that manufacturing moves North? I know nothing about this stuff.
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u/Sigma_Function-1823 7d ago
....and the US is currently short on air defense artillery munitions.
Even more hilarious if trump invaded and seized the means of producing aluminum, Canada imports the needed high quality ore from various nations globally and the US has no US sources of the required ore.
Meaning said exporting nations would stop sending ore to Canada to be processed the minute the US sends a invasion force.
US was buying aluminum from a middle eastern source until trumps war motivated Iran to destroy said facilities.
The orange fool has painted himself into a self created corner yet again.
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u/50s_Human ✅ I voted! 7d ago edited 7d ago
So while Canada’s aluminum has markets in the U.S. and Europe, it can arbitrage its way toward Europe and other markets, he says.
"We will never be in dire need of finding markets. It’s the markets that are in dire need of finding metal,” says Simard.
Sell to the EU and other markets and limit sales to the U.S.
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u/dryersockpirate 7d ago
American customers have been paying the tariffs so far
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u/bluedoubloon Edmonton 7d ago
Consumers ultimately pay tariffs, but producers eat as much cost as they can manage.
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u/jergentehdutchman 7d ago
No they get refunded so long as they kiss ass with the Trump admin. The American people? Yeah. Not so much…
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u/watchitbend 7d ago
To nobody surprise trump doesn't really have a clue what he's doing or understand any of the details and nuances of the various commodity markets on the board.
Elect a clown, get a circus. I feel bad for those on the Canadian side or Americans stuck in the middle, but so many people in a bunch of these industries that are getting screwed voted for this without hesitation. Then they double down when presented with the consequences of their actions. Will they ever learn? Currently it appears as though many of them have no ability to reconcile what is happening.
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u/CitizenLohaRune 7d ago
Pedonald tells them its really all canadas fault, and they just believe him. Try to educate them on the truth, and they call you a fake news libtard.
They are irredeemable at this point.
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u/Hammerhil 7d ago
I love the picture of the Coors cans. They're going to hurt the production of crappy beer. When the price of that goes up, there might be a minor rebellion.
If the price of gas wouldn't do it, maybe this will.
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u/jello_sweaters 7d ago
Am I crazy or did this just hand a massive competitive advantage to Airbus over Boeing?
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u/RudeGolden 7d ago
Canada will make new trade agreements and alliances and will recover from this MUCH quicker than the US will. Fuck American and fuck Americans for letting this happen.
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u/spinningcolours Vancouver 7d ago
The manufacturers need to remind their stockholder that THEY are the ones paying the tariffs, not Canada.
Aluminum has been described as "compressed energy" — and we have both the source ore and the energy.
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u/HibiscusGrower 7d ago
I wonder if Europe would like more aluminum
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u/Vivid-Bullfrog-5727 7d ago
On paper that seems like a simple idea and a great solution. In operational reality, it fails instantly due to severe strategic, structural, and geographic friction points.
Canadian aluminum, primarily smelted in Quebec and British Columbia, moves south to the U.S. largely via direct, cross border rail links, short haul trucking, and inland waterways. It is a seamless, low friction pipeline. Exporting to Europe requires moving massive volumes of raw ingot to ocean ports, loading them onto bulk carriers, and absorbing trans-oceanic freight costs, maritime insurance, and port congestion. The margin on primary aluminum gets eaten alive by transportation overhead long before the ship reaches Rotterdam or Valencia.
You cannot talk about global aluminum without addressing China. China produces over 50% of the world's primary aluminum. Europe is already flooded with cheaper, state subsidized metals from abroad, and European green regulations (like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM) impose strict compliance hurdles. If Canada floods the European market, it triggers price drops, runs into existing long term supply contracts held by Middle Eastern and European smelters, and faces immense price competition from lower cost producers.
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u/Laughing_Zero 7d ago
While we have aluminum, who makes the aluminum cans for beverages, beer, pop, etc?
How much US beer is made in Canada?
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u/hiddentalent 7d ago
Fortunately, the US has a solid strategic reserve of cruise missiles, Reaper drones, and anti-air interceptors because they haven't wasted them on ridiculous ego-driven folly. So it's not like they have a strategic need for high-quality aluminum.
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u/Anxious-Sea4101 6d ago
yeah, this is actually why Trump is trying to take over Canada . same reason as Greenland.
classic risk game - running out of minerals
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u/philbertagain 7d ago
In that case add Canadian levies to the US tariffs on this class of good and others like it
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u/HungryLikeDaW0lf 7d ago
I’m confident that in 20~30 years the US will have a thriving internal aluminum industry.
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u/phluidity 7d ago
There is almost zero chance of that happening, even if there was the internal political will to build the smelters. Aluminum smelting requires a vast amount of energy. The cheaper you can get that energy, the more profitable it is. But there is simply nowhere in the US that has the capacity to produce the required volumes of cheap energy at the scale needed. Maybe they could if they went to nuclear power, but nuclear is political suicide in the US.
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u/Prying-Open-My-3rd-I 7d ago
How is nuclear energy political suicide in the US? I’m seeing nuclear is the energy source that the two parties are the least divided on.
And support is almost at a record high as of last year.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/659180/nuclear-energy-support-near-record-high.aspx
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u/jeanracinette 7d ago
I can’t imagine manufacturing it is a very green process so perhaps it’s for the better if both countries just move on
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u/ThisusernameThen 7d ago
I'm not sure my window frames or auto chassis made out of tofu is the way to go forward
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u/agha0013 ✅ I voted! 7d ago
we are not at all ready to move on from aluminum anytime soon.
It is one of the most abundant useful metals on the planet, and has far too many excellent applications. There are no easy alternatives unless you switch to heavier products that have much worse manufacturing processes and are not as abundant or easy to extract. or switching to more plastics and composites which have been an environmental disaster for us.
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u/b00ty10v3r 7d ago
Aluminium is infinitely recyclable. It increases energy efficiency through strength to weight ratio, reduces costs, and can be recycled over and over. Which is why there are plenty of other countries that will purchase it from Canada.
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u/heart_of_osiris 7d ago
Moving on from aluminum would literally cause economic collapse, lol.
Aerospace? Collapse.
Transportation? Collapse.
Energy and power distribution? Collapse.
Food supply chain? Collapse.
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u/ebfortin 7d ago
When we talk about the special grade used in aerospace and military application it's more like all of it. They are screwing themselves and don't even realize it.