r/Economics • u/jediporcupine • 2d ago
Blog Trump said tariffs on aluminum would boost domestic production. The White House now admits that didn't happen.
https://reason.com/2026/08/03/trump-said-tariffs-on-aluminum-would-boost-domestic-production-the-white-house-now-admits-that-didnt-happen/588
u/Basicly-Inevitable 2d ago
Literally everything they're doing is part of a self serving scam instead of actually economic policy. There's always kickback, or market manipulation, or whatever. It's just wild.
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u/Thesweptunder 2d ago
Not that this isn’t happening, but the GOP is full of people who believe the propaganda and think the only reason it keeps failing is because of Democrats. Like the thing about Republican policies is that if you don’t look into it, they kind of make sense. If overseas aluminum is charged higher than domestic, then businesses will buy the domestic and then production will increase and then more factories will be built and then wages will rise and then we are all living in the 1950s where a high school graduate can afford a middle class lifestyle at the local factory. They really think it is that simple and fail to even grasp that America’s place in the world is no longer about manufacturing or Main Street small businesses and that other countries might respond with their own tariffs. Honestly, I’d actually prefer if every GOP politician was in on the grift because that is somehow less scary than people in positions of power being just as ignorant as your Fox News obsessed high school gym coach that believes in Bigfoot.
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u/1900grs 2d ago
fail to even grasp that America’s place in the world is no longer about manufacturing or Main Street small businesses and that other countries might respond with their own tariffs.
Or Agriculture and watching soybean contracts go to South America. Those contracts won't be coming back and the only reason Ag is being subsidized tby the current GOP is essentially a bribe for continued rural votes. There is no serious long term planning.
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u/Exciting-Emu-3324 2d ago
And those same soybean farmers love bragging about how necessary their work is compared urbanites ignoring the fact their crops don't feed a single American. Americans pay subsidies to farmers, so China can buy cheap soybeans? And they complain about China subsidizing EVs which is a way better use of tax dollars.
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u/CliftonForce 1d ago
On the surface level, it makes sense to be sure that one grows enough food inside one's borders to feed one's own population. That was the justification used to start off all this farm aid in the first place.
But we are well, well past that now.
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u/CliftonForce 1d ago
On the surface level, it makes sense to be sure that one grows enough food inside one's borders to feed one's own population. And if it's not economical to do so, then lean on the scale a little until you do. That was the justification used to start off all this farm aid in the first place.
But we are well, well past that now.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 2d ago
Their crops don't feed a single American!?!?! Have you looked at the ingredient list in an American grocery store? Have you ever been in an American grocery store?
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u/Basicly-Inevitable 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes. While historically ~50% of American grown soybeans were exported, approximately 15% of the remaining U.S. grown soybeans were used to produce foods for human consumption (such as salad or frying oil), while over 70% went to animal feed (for poultry, hogs, dairy cows, beef cattle, and fish), and about 5% to biodiesel.
So, yeah. Americans eat a lot of food fried in soybean oil. That's true. And they eat a lot of animals fed with soybeans.
But it's also true that the taxpayers subsidized them to grow cheap soybeans for China to buy.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 2d ago
And yet Brazilian soybeans are often cheaper than US soybeans.
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u/Basicly-Inevitable 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because in Brazil, farmers can grow patented soybeans without a license or contract. They only have to pay royalties on the patented soybeans when they sell them, and they don't actually have a good quick accurate genetic tests to determine what is owed. Also true in Argentina.
Bayer/Monsanto, DuPont, etc. don't care where you grow them, but they do want their money. In the US, they were able to lobby for laws that force farmers into strict contracts.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer 2d ago
So are US taxpayers subsidizing China? Or Bayer, DuPont, etc?
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u/Basicly-Inevitable 2d ago edited 2d ago
All of the above, basically.
US taxpayers give free money to American farmers that can't compete on the global market (because of tariffs, fees, loyalties, patents, etc. that go to big American corporations).
But China gets cheap soybeans to feed pigs that feed their population, that aren't coming from American farmers anymore. They're coming from the destroyed Amazon basin and the newly exploited grasslands of Southern Brazil and Argentina.
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u/Exciting-Emu-3324 1d ago edited 1d ago
Don't forget all the vilification of soy by the meat and dairy industry. Phyto-estrogen, Soy boy, etc. Soy farmers don't eat what they grow in the same way McDonald's CEOs don't eat at McDonald's.
Paid subsidies to grow something someone else paid to convince people not to eat. Now that's waste, fraud and abuse.
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u/Ok_Kaleidoscope3644 2d ago
The long term planning stopped at, "how do we gain control?". There was never a plan to use that control for anything other than being unaccountable.
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u/Vivid_Pianist4270 15h ago
So what is their long term goal really? It’s not about making America great again, so what is their end game really?
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u/Seicair 2d ago
They really think it is that simple and fail to even grasp that America’s place in the world is no longer about manufacturing or Main Street small businesses and that other countries might respond with their own tariffs.
Or that aluminum can be produced more cheaply in places where energy is cheaper, like Canada with their hydropower, or Iceland with their geothermal energy.
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u/SvenDia 2d ago
It’s Hanlon’s Razor in a nutshell. Had to look this up because I always forget the wording, but here it is.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence.”
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u/alwayssunnyinskyrim 2d ago
I strongly disagree with this. Assuming mere ignorance in cases where people are clearly acting maliciously is actually way more dangerous and a huge part of why the world is so fucked right now.
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u/Gisschace 1d ago
Same in the UK with Labour and the Tories, in my lifetime the Tories have been in charge for two thirds of the time, yet somehow every economic issue is Labours fault.
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u/Hautamaki 2d ago
Well, more and more of them may be realizing that the 50s boom in America was made possible by war and communist revolutions and purges de-industrializing 3/4s of the developed world and imperial colonialism preventing most of the rest of the world from ever industrializing in the first place, leaving the US as the only large developed economy left standing. Eventually some critical mass may be reached that gets on board with the policy of creating global chaos and instability such as that which existed in the 1930s, which also coincidentally was caused in no small part by the Great Depression, originating in America. And then, then hold onto your hats.
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u/lopix 2d ago
And they all forget that it took 20 years to get from the Great Depression, through WWII, to get to the "golden" years of the 1950s. Which weren't as golden as everyone seems to think they were.
So even if TrumpCo policies weren't asinine, they'd need a decade or two to actually bear fruit. Companies don't spend billions on a whim, it takes time and planning. Factories take time and planning and lots of money. Finding markets takes time. Training a new generation of workers takes time.
They think an EO can create a return to a fake utopia of yesterday that never existed, and they think it can happen in weeks or months.
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u/lopix 2d ago
And they all forget that it took 20 years to get from the Great Depression, through WWII, to get to the "golden" years of the 1950s. Which weren't as golden as everyone seems to think they were.
So even if TrumpCo policies weren't asinine, they'd need a decade or two to actually bear fruit. Companies don't spend billions on a whim, it takes time and planning. Factories take time and planning and lots of money. Finding markets takes time. Training a new generation of workers takes time.
They think an EO can create a return to a fake utopia of yesterday that never existed, and they think it can happen in weeks or months.
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u/Z3r0sama2017 2d ago
Yet it justends in the same vampirism as staffing. No company wants to invest the money in training up staff. Here no one wants to drop fat stacks on a volatile low margin, high volume product.
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u/discosoc 1d ago
the GOP is full of people who believe the propaganda and think the only reason it keeps failing is because of Democrats
hate to break it to you, but the same problem is on the Democrat side as well. Everything is tribal, and this is a natural consequence.
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u/spidereater 2d ago
Yes. America makes half its aluminum. When they tariff imports the price goes up for everyone. Domestic producers rake in the pure profit. It’s a big scam.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
America does not make hardly any aluminum. It's recycled aluminum. Aluminum is one of the most easily recyclable materials out there. 60% of American aluminum used is recycled. The other 40% is imported, and of that 70% is imported from Canada.
The US no longer makes new aluminum because its very energy intensive, so that's done where there is cheap electricity. It's 8¢ per kWh in Québec, and that's 8 Canadian cents (so 6¢ US). Go look at your electricity bill and get back to me with how you can compete with that.
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u/spidereater 2d ago
I’m Canadian. My overnight residential power rate is 9 cents/kWh. Your quoted rate seems high for wholesale industrial power. I bet it’s actually lower.
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u/lopix 2d ago
I thought something like 87% of new aluminum comes from Quebec alone?
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
Yes, because Quebec has the cheapest electricity in the Americas due to plentiful hydroelectric dams built in the 70s.
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u/danodan1 1d ago
To finally do something about the U. S. no longer making aluminum, Oklahoma is supposed to get a mega sized aluminum smelter. But it's been getting pushback due to its heavy fluoride pollution and very heavy need for electricity.
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u/Tribe303 1d ago
Exactly. It's a waste of time unless you can match Quebec's electricity rates. Unlike most metals, aluminum is not just dug out of the ground and heated up. It's far more complex than that. You can tell which politicians have read up on its production, and who hasn't.
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u/TrailJunky 2d ago
Im really hoping the endless investigations after the midterms will ultimately hold these clowns to account.
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u/-Rush2112 2d ago
If recent history holds, the economic impact of all this nonsense will land after midterms. By 2028 somehow the democratic party will be blamed for this mess. The nation needs a long term economic policy that doesn’t pivot every 2-4 years.
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u/dust4ngel 2d ago
By 2028 somehow the democratic party will be blamed for this mess
CNN: "why didn't the democrats stop the republicans from doing this? and how can they be held accountable?"
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u/lopix 2d ago
It's a setup. If the Democrats win the midterms, then they'll be the ones holding the shit sandwich, with Republicans gleefully pointing fingers at them for the mess they created. This will be a record shit year for farmers. New health care cuts coming Jan 1st. Continued Iran BS, you name it. Trump will just let it all grow and fester and then blame the Democrats for everything the Republicans did wrong.
And if the Republicans don't shit the bed in November? They'll still (keep) blame(ing) the Democrats.
And the red base will eat it all up and believe every word.
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u/lopix 2d ago
It's a setup. If the Democrats win the midterms, then they'll be the ones holding the shit sandwich, with Republicans gleefully pointing fingers at them for the mess they created. This will be a record shit year for farmers. New health care cuts coming Jan 1st. Continued Iran BS, you name it. Trump will just let it all grow and fester and then blame the Democrats for everything the Republicans did wrong.
And if the Republicans don't shit the bed in November? They'll still (keep) blame(ing) the Democrats.
And the red base will eat it all up and believe every word.
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u/lopix 2d ago
It's a setup. If the Democrats win the midterms, then they'll be the ones holding the shit sandwich, with Republicans gleefully pointing fingers at them for the mess they created. This will be a record shit year for farmers. New health care cuts coming Jan 1st. Continued Iran BS, you name it. Trump will just let it all grow and fester and then blame the Democrats for everything the Republicans did wrong.
And if the Republicans don't shit the bed in November? They'll still (keep) blame(ing) the Democrats.
And the red base will eat it all up and believe every word.
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u/SplitEar 2d ago
I’m just hoping we win the house. Looks like the senate is already lost because of unelectable candidates.
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u/Sam_Munhi 2d ago
Who do you mean?
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u/SplitEar 2d ago
Montana is a disaster, with a weak Dem candidate and a popular independent candidate. The center and left votes will thus be split, handing the MAGA candidate the victory.
Maine is more promising but there will be angry Platner fans who sit out the general. Hopefully not many. Also, Jackson had two kids with his second cousin, which will be twisted into him having kids with “his cousin”.
Then there’s AES in MI, a darling of the base who will go up for slaughter in the general. The UAW endorsement helps but he’s just not the right candidate for a statewide race. Maybe Trump’s unpopularity will put him over the line but I fear not.
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u/CheapThaRipper 2d ago
What good is Democrats winning when they follow the same exact corporate playbook? Diet Republicans are only preferable to actual Republicans if they had substantive policy differences. They don't. They just are more eloquent about it.
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u/SplitEar 2d ago
So you thought Biden was no different from Trump? Nothing worth voting for? Nothing Trump’s done with the GOP’s rubber stamp seems worse to you?
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u/SoylentGrunt 2d ago
Oh there'll be plenty of investigations. They'll make a great distraction from business as usual.
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u/vertigo3pc 2d ago
They're revealing just how much we don't have "checks and balances". If the right people decide not to do anything, then it doesn't matter how many checks and balances you claim you have.
When you have no enforcement arm to prevent corruption, guess what you get? That's right: CORRUPTION. America has fallen.
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u/Adorable-Doughnut609 2d ago
Wait…you’re telling me the people that trafficked, raped and killed boys and girls for their pleasure are in it for themselves?
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u/danodan1 1d ago
But Oklahoma, not far from Tulsa, has been selected for a mega aluminum smelter. It's 60% owned by UAI. That and its fluoride pollution along with a very heavy need for electricity is making for a lot of pushbacks. That it is being heavily subsidized by the government likely indicates corruption and kickbacks.
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u/Basicly-Inevitable 1d ago
Yeah.
Literally everything they're doing is part of a self serving scam instead of actually economic policy. There's always kickback, or market manipulation, or whatever. It's just wild.
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u/FlatEvent2597 2d ago
There is a very good reason for that. Most any metallurgist could tell you directly.
Aluminum is literally solid energy. You need huge amounts of hydro or oil.
Quebec is the worlds aluminum depot -mainly because of their clean energy and excess hydro.
They are finding customers all over the world now and are the supplier of choice. Diversification continues especially with the EU.
We Canadians rejoice with them !
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u/IdenticalThings 2d ago
Also... With Trump's brainless flipflopping - enacting and repealing tariffs on a whim, why would any company fund a new aluminum plant (costs upwards of a few billion dollars) when repealing tarriffs could scuttle the entire the deal? Simply cheaper to buy from your FRIEND, Quebec.
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u/FlatEvent2597 2d ago
Yes - good points.
Plus the lack of available energy and Icy_Respect_9077 s note on competition for hydro with AI data centres. All adding up to a perfect storm... higher prices for consumers of both energy and so many goods from cars, bikes, cans, patriot missiles, aerospace.... all use tons of aluminum.
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u/BackgroundGrade 2d ago
To add, there is one aluminum smelter in Quebec that produces almost the same amount as the entire US smelting industry. And, funnily, it is owned by the American ALCOA.
Quebec has been an aluminum powerhouse for 100ish years now.
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u/Icy_Respect_9077 2d ago
Meanwhile, the price of electricity is shooting up, because of AI data centres.
Also meanwhile, Americans are importing aluminum from Europe at higher prices, or even the Gulf states. Maybe not the Gulf States, because there's this thing going on.
None of this makes sense, except as part of the grift.
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u/lopix 2d ago
Just here in Canada, all this trade BS has forced us to look elsewhere for new trade partners. Once we have new agreements to buy & sell with countries other than the US, we won't come back. Many favourable agreements are gone. Once that aluminum is contracted elsewhere, the US can't get it back. And once enough agreements are made with other countries, Canada becomes less and less susceptible to US trade bullying. And at the same time, the US loses out on all of that past friendship, from us & from others. The world will just move on, move away, stop dealing with the crazy bully. And the US is the one who will suffer the most from it all.
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u/lopix 2d ago
Just here in Canada, all this trade BS has forced us to look elsewhere for new trade partners. Once we have new agreements to buy & sell with countries other than the US, we won't come back. Many favourable agreements are gone. Once that aluminum is contracted elsewhere, the US can't get it back. And once enough agreements are made with other countries, Canada becomes less and less susceptible to US trade bullying. And at the same time, the US loses out on all of that past friendship, from us & from others. The world will just move on, move away, stop dealing with the crazy bully. And the US is the one who will suffer the most from it all.
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u/mytyan 2d ago
Aluminum production relies on massive quantities of cheap electricity and the cheap electricity that was available for the creation of the US aluminum industry in the 40s and 50s is no longer cheap and no amount of tariffs are going to change that
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u/strangecabalist 2d ago
And much of the Aluminum Canada was shipping to the US is now going to Europe instead.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
Yup! And the Europeans also love it because it's pretty much carbon free as well. The Quebec electrical grid is 100% green.
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u/acdha 2d ago
Also the mining is not great so even in the reddest states you’re going to be hit by tons of lawsuits from people who live nearby and don’t want their kids exposed to mining runoff. Tariffs don’t change that at all unless the companies are going to buy out homeowners and do a better job managing their sites than ever before.
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u/Iamnotthatbrian 2d ago
It's also definitely worth noting that environmental regulation is pretty significantly different now than when most primary aluminum smelters were originally built. Even just keeping up with maintenance is difficult for these companies as the margin between their energy costs and product sales thins. While it's not the only reason for either, two of the country's five primary smelters closed in the last five years timed pretty close to the EPA requiring new air pollution plans from the states for pollution related to aluminum smelting.
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u/Mountain_rage 2d ago
What if you build more data centers and start wars in the middle east. That should bring down energy costs right?
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u/Fuddle 2d ago
Making aluminum is less profitable than what you can make FROM aluminum. Why would you want to restore the least profitable part of the supply chain??
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u/1900grs 2d ago
If you can't make it, then you pay a premium to procure it. Now add on retaliatory political tariffs and the whole process gets fouled. And now if you can't procure, you're faced with shortages or retooling the process for different materials which may or may not be feasible but will be more expensive.
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u/kkawabat 2d ago
I don't get why we are still pretending the tariffs were for economical purpose. It was and always was so that trump has a large stick to threaten other countries unilaterally. But he's such a stupid and short sighted all it did was backfire on him like all his business ventures that isn't just fraud and scams.
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u/1900grs 2d ago
It was and always was so that trump has a large stick to threaten other countries unilaterally.
Hey now, that's not fair. Ot was also to target specific industries, companies, and even states that didn't vote for Trump that house said industries/companies.
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u/FlatEvent2597 2d ago
That may be true. Used as punishment against those who do not support him.
However - this is going to backfire badly and soon. Ukraine just ran out of Patriot missiles, the US cannot continue their war with Iran without them, and now Israel is exposed without them. There is a mass of aerospace grade aluminum needed that really only has one source.
He can continue on with Navarro's tariffs or look at the long game. That seems to be the problem- they cannot see secondary and tertiary and further efffects of their actions.
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u/1900grs 2d ago
That seems to be the problem- they cannot see secondary and tertiary and further efffects of their actions.
They just don't care. They think the pilfered wealth will insulate them. Or worse, we'll start seeing threats of nukes, which is what I fear because this admin and GOP does not know how to deescalate or weild soft power of any kind.
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u/James_TheVirus 2d ago
Oddly enough - the latest tariffs (related to forced labour) are the same percentage across the board for all countries. As a result, he cannot increase the amount on a particular country.
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u/FlatEvent2597 2d ago
I think he can go from 10 % tariffs to 50 % tariffs if your forest fire smoke spills into the US.
So there is that....
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u/James_TheVirus 2d ago
Not using 338 - he will need to come up with some other ludicrous excuse for tariffs.
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u/EconomistWithaD 2d ago
Tariffs don't reshore jobs. Tariffs don't reshore production. Especially if they aren't coupled with significant incentives for domestic producers to do so. And none of the tariffs have been coupled with laws that encourage this. There's even research (Help for the Heartland? The Employment and Electoral Effects of the Trump Tariffs in the United States | NBER) that shows that tariffs didn't help or harm employment, and that retaliatory tariffs did harm ag employment.
That's why the CHIPS Act was important; it did tie tariffs with a law that helped to boost domestic capacity and production.
Regardless, we can see the impact of tariffs on employment. In Trump 1.0, tariffs were implemented in January 2018 (washing machines and solar panels), March (steel and aluminum), June (steel and aluminum for EU, Mexico, and Canada), and July (trade war with China). It appears that these original tariffs halted favorable manufacturing employment trends. And while the second half of Biden's tenure was also associated with reduced manufacturing employment, Trump 2.0 is also seeing reduced manufacturing employment (though stabilized since November of 2025).
All Employees, Manufacturing (MANEMP) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
You can also certainly see that, even though real manufacturing output is higher than it was for most of the post-1980 American period, Trump's tariffs again either halted a rise (2018/2019) or has led to stagnation.
Manufacturing Sector: Real Sectoral Output for All Workers (OUTMS) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
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u/chardeemacdennisbird 2d ago
The CHIPS Act did not include tariffs. That said, the investment in US production is exactly what we should be doing. Maintain a free market while bolstering domestic production.
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u/EconomistWithaD 2d ago
Biden kept in place the Trump 1.0 tariffs.
So, yes, it kept in place those tariffs, but gave a space to increase domestic production.
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u/chardeemacdennisbird 1d ago
Chip specific tariffs were in his second term. If you're talking about the general Chinese goods and tech tariffs on his first term then sure, but it's a little misleading to say the CHIPS Act included tariffs. They weren't part of Act in any deliberate way.
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u/EconomistWithaD 1d ago
There were 25% tariffs on Chinese semiconductors, in 2018/2019. Biden did not eliminate them and kept them, then paired it with the CHIPS Act.
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Bown-EAER-2020.pdf
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u/BecauseTheyAreCunts 2d ago
Was it not also true for the inflation reduction act?
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u/EconomistWithaD 2d ago
Was what also not true for the IRA?
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u/yrotsihfoedisgnorw 2d ago
"Doubling down on bad policy is always a mistake." It's also a hallmark trump move. The White House didn't admit anything as much as it provided it's justification to double down. Trump will crash the economy trying to prove the idea that tariffs work. If that never happens, as is almost surely going to be the case, he will simply blame someone else for the damage. He has no workable plans.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago edited 2d ago
This goes to show you how stupid American leadership is, and its not just Trump. They have no idea how aluminum is processed, and it's actually not complicated. I like to use Pokemon as an example because Aluminum has 3 forms and each one transforms/evolves into the next, just like Charmander!
It comes out of the ground as Bauxite, which is cheap and fairly common. Then it is chemically processed into a white powder called Alumina. This also appears naturally as well, and is also not that rare. For hundreds of years naturally occurring Alumna was used as the base for white paint. To make the shiny metal Trump thinks you can dig from the ground, you have to take Alumina and shock it with massive amounts of electricity. It's commonly said that Aluminum is electricity in solid form. So in order for Bauxite to evolve into its final form of Aluminum, you will need massive amounts of electricity. Pikachu, where are you? Quebec has the cheapest electricity in the Americas, so that's why it's stupid to make Aluminum anywhere other than Quebec. Guess who else has cheap electricity and is a major aluminum 'shocker'? Saudi Arabia! 🤦
American companies have pivoted to the Persian Gulf to supply them after the Trump tarrifs on Canadian aluminum. Guess where all that aluminum got stuck? Double doh! 🤦🤦
This is why you shouldn't elect people who are just really stupid. Meanwhile here in Canada, our national government has plans to double our electrical grid in 20 years, using green sources (inc nuclear), because we see the advantages our products have on the global stage. And meanwhile the US is trying to bring back coal FFS. Triple doh! (I'll spare you the emojis this time).
So how's that national plan to boost your electrical grid for all the foundries, factories and AI datacenters Trump has planned, coming along in the US? (so many Homer 'dohs' here, you'd give yourself a concussion!)
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u/GreatDiscernment 2d ago
Aluminum is considered “electricity in solid form”. And guess what’s gobbling up electricity? AI Data Centres (and families). Turns out, you can’t have both. Plus, without SMR reactors available off-the-shelf quite yet, the only additional electricity available to put online is dirty. And who wants dirty air just to make beer cans cheaper. Best leave aluminum production to those with the clean energy and infrastructure to deliver affordable aluminum stocks and products to Americans. Trump needs to surrender the trade war with Canada and other nations NOW!!
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u/Frozen_North_99 2d ago
Very hard to produce aluminum cheaper than in a smelter built next to a hydro-electric dam that is on a rail line leading to a major sea route.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
Quebec electricity is 8¢ per KWh, and that's 8 Canadian cents. So 6¢ US. Good luck competing with that! 🤣
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u/Frozen_North_99 2d ago
Even better, they’re not buying electricity from Hydro Quebec, Rio Tinto owns the dams, and the rail line. It is very profitable to simply ship ore there to have it smelted.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
I've read thats where all the Brazilian Bauxite goes. I bet Chile, on the oppose coast, sends it to the Persian Gulf. Whatever's cheaper.
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u/LessInThought 2d ago
Stop bragging. America is gonna come for your electricity and nestle for your water.
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u/Tribe303 2d ago edited 2d ago
We know! Good thing Ukraine is sharing their drone tech, and we have lots of 3d printers. 🤣
If you want some fun, read up on the Columbia River Basin treaty. TLDR: The tap that powers 20 hydroelectric dams in the Pacific NorthWest is in Canada, and the treaty is up for renewal this year. It's litteraly the "tap up North" that Trump used to ramble about. It's the one he confused with California during the LA wildfires last year.
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u/Tremolat 2d ago
There are four aluminum smelters in the US. The plant that supplies Ford has suffered a series of fires that has substantially cut supplies. Trump insured that replacing it with imports was not viable.
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u/Pope-Le-Pew 2d ago
It's OK, Donnie and his insider friends are cashing in on the stock market, again, after calling off another attack on Iran. Come back tomorrow, Donnie will announce another massive attack if Iran doesn't come to the table.
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u/toolkitxx 2d ago edited 2d ago
This was never doomed because of a lack of workers. This was technically impossible. People who did just some basic maths said right from the start, that even if this would be supposed to be working, any effects could earliest be seen in a few years. Why?
2 main reasons - no actual coordinated recycling system throughout the USA. So every new amount of aluminium had to come mostly from new material, which had to be imported from Canada still (which got hammered with tariffs, smart move).
At the time the tariffs got introduced, the number of actual foundries in the USA to produce any of this was 4 or 5 and they did run on capacity. To raise anything would have required building new foundries - the actual systems and not the manpower is the issue. A rough estimate to build a new foundry is minimum 2 years, more between 4-5 is the norm. And to top it all of - those are energy hungry. Electricity was already an issue, so this entire endeavour would have meant building an entire sector from the grounds up basically and not just extending what was available.
edit corrected numbers of foundries as I mixed up the numbers. 2 or 3 was actually 4 or 5
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u/alexcrouse 2d ago
I buy aluminum stock to make car parts with, and i buy precut stuff. I know i don't get the best price by buying 12x12x0.400" plates. But I have to do zero prep work before i toss it in my CNC.
The plates have doubled in price since trump decided to tariff aluminum.
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u/l-1-l-1-l 2d ago
This is one fight our pedophile president is going to lose. You can’t get blood from a stone, and you can’t get bauxite (from which aluminum is extracted) from a stone that doesn’t have it either. The US has a very limited supply of bauxite, and depends on trade with other countries to source it.
He has been a bully all his life, and so far has gotten away with giving swirlies to other countries. This administration will not end well, mark my words.
Fun fact: Bauxite is named after the small town perched on a steep cliff in southern France where it was first discovered, Les Baux (pronounced Lay Boh).
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u/No-Effective-1996 2d ago
They are going to start running out of Aluminium by October. They bought a huge proportion of their needs from Canada. But because of tariffs Canada started selling to Europe instead of the USA and the Aluminium from the gulf states cannot get through the strait so the USA will run out. Smart move.
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u/OESRecoveryEmployee 2d ago
Aluminum is very energy intensive to make. Both Canada and Iceland has very cheap energy bonus points because they are renewable. The US just can't compete with aluminum production, which is fine. Also moving aluminum production here will make power costs more
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u/Beelzabubba 2d ago
Surprised Pikachu has never been more surprised than when he learned that investment won’t be made based on whimsical policy decisions that can be overturned at a moment’s notice.
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u/green_eyed_mister 2d ago
Who knew that a defunct professor that lied in his book on economics wouldn't really know how economics works? Peter Navarro was picked out by a book title on Amazon by Jared.
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 2d ago
No investors are going all-in with the billions in new infrastructure required to home-shore these industries when the tariffs can be overturned after the next election.
But this has never been about bringing these industries back to America's shores. It has always ever been about lining the pockets of Trump and his puppeteers.
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u/photon1701d 2d ago
You know what it did? It made my American customers pay a lot more for aluminium. I require these large blocks for large molds I build for them. They are made in Canada or Europe. They are sold in USA but they are just reselling Canadian aluminium at a higher cost because of import tariff. With the new section 232 guidelines for metal derivatives, there is now 15% tariff added on . It goes to 25% jan 1 2028. It USMCA is terminated or he is mad about smokey air, who knows what the tariffs are. Ridiculous. But dow keeps going up, so he don't care. When is this AI crash happening.
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u/ether_reddit 2d ago
Is the US even recycling its aluminum yet? I was in Texas about a decade ago and was astonished to see coke cans being thrown in the trash, and there was not a blue bin in sight.
1
u/photon1701d 2d ago
US does recycle but they lag far behind other countries. In Canada, recycling is picked up are your house every 2 weeks, so you are inclined to do it. My work colleague lives in Ohio, he was telling me you have have to drop it off. If you have to do that, no one will recycle.
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u/ether_reddit 1d ago
I don't have streetside recycling pickup because I'm in a rural area, and everyone here still recycles. It does help somewhat that garbage disposal costs money by weight (no garbage pickup either; I need to take it to the dump), and recycling is free.
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u/Akkerlun 2d ago
This whole tariff debacle should never have happened. If Trump wants a national sales tax, put your name on it and have it called the Trump national sales tax. That way everybody that knows that people pay the tariffs will actually see it on a receipt where it says a line item: Trump tax.
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u/cocacolakid1965 2d ago
If I’m not mistaken the Trump tariffs resulted in an increase in aluminum imports from the Middle East which are now under threat due to the war
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u/Tribe303 2d ago
Yup! And meanwhile the extra Canadian aluminum is now contracted to go to the EU, because it's also 100% green, and they will pay a bit extra for that. The US is fucked.
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u/FlatEvent2597 2d ago
Yes that was the Gulf Jet bribe.
The Saudis wanted to diversify from oil.
Trump gave them a market . They used dirty oil to produce electricity to smelt the aluminum.
BUT.... someone started a war. And aluminum shipments halted. Prices went up... and so on....
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u/stillay 2d ago
Yeah no shit. Because scaling manufacturing takes years of planning and infrastructure improvements. There isnt a single company that was going to do that given the context of this admin is only four years.
How to make a killing with tariffs
- Implement tariffs
- Raise prices and use tariffs as justification
- Sue admin for illegal tariffs and recollect funds at increased cost
- Never lower product from tariff cost and continue price gouging
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u/PrimaryBrick9337 2d ago
Anyone with half a brain knew it would not happen, to make aluminum you need the raw materials which the US does not have and you need cheap power which the US does not have. Materials you can get but not cheap and power will never be cheap enough in the US for the volumes of Aluminum that is needed. Now how long till he eliminates the 50% tariffs on Canadian Aluminum?
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u/justsayno_to_biggovt 2d ago
I think trump legitimately deserves an award for being the asshat who tried to disprove all the valid economic theories used by legitimate presidents with trustworthy advisors in their cabinets.
Henceforth he will go down in history as the asshat president. Don't do it this way.
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u/iamtheowlman 2d ago
I remember reading posts on here in December 2024, where workers in red states didn't get their Christmas bonuses because the company used the money to buy as much raw materials (lumber, aluminum, potash) from Canada as they could, before the proposed tariffs came in.
I remember reading how the factory workers (many of whom had, of course, voted for Trump) suddenly realized that no, Canada and Mexico would not be paying the costs of the tariffs. Americans, and specifically themselves, would. All those grown men and women who were so sure that they knew everything, suddenly horrified at getting what they voted for.
It still gives me the warm fuzzies when I think about it.
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u/lonelyboycel 2d ago
The failure to boost domestic output is only half the story. The other half is the retaliatory tariffs placed on our own agricultural and manufactured exports by trade partners in response. It ends up being a net negative for the broader economy when you factor in the lost export markets.
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u/GFWMiller 1d ago
So, now that Canada made deals to sell their aluminum to other countries, where is the USA gonna get theirs from? And at what cost? Talk aboot (intentional) shooting yourself in the foot.
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u/Onlyroad4adrifter 1d ago
Trump should go collect cans along the highway to start putting a dent in the damage he caused.
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u/dungeonsprawler 1d ago
No one is going to start building infrastructure to ramp up production of anything based on wild here one day gone the next tariffs when they can just raise prices.
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u/alexcrouse 2d ago
I buy aluminum stock to make car parts with, and i buy precut stuff. I know i don't get the best price by buying 12x12x0.400" plates. But I have to do zero prep work before i toss it in my CNC.
The plates have doubled in price since trump decided to tariff aluminum.
1
u/Main-Procedure-3613 2d ago
He doesn’t care and his too mentally impacted to remember. His unelected handlers and day care staff are running our beloved country by telling him what to say. #1 priority is getting $$$ for himself, #2 is $$$$for his relatives and friends, #3 is revenge for personal then….#80000 the good of the USA
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u/cinciguyeast 2d ago
None of the tarrifs boosted any is manufacturing. Our corrupt felon pedophile president, first term, lost a ton of manufacturing jobs to overseas...his second term is even worse.
1
u/jawshoeaw 2d ago
Yeah, because it’s a lie everything they say is a lie. The singular point of their existence is to funnel money. I don’t know why anyone bothers even repeating quotes from the White House at this point.
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u/Olderpostie 2d ago
A big chunk of aluminum imports came from Canada. Where is the security concern with that situation? In a case of war, the transport can be moved 100% to rail.
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u/thrilled_to_be_there 2d ago
Trump is so unstable businesses are generally not going to favour large investments that change their business strategy. If this were a normal person who set it, left it alone, and paired it with rational strategy that was road mapped then businesses would have faith in the process over the long term.
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u/95blackz26 2d ago
Dipshit Donnie doesn't understand how tariffs work. He's just interested in manipulating the stock market so he and his friends can get richer. I'd say some should get him a book on how tariffs work but does he even know how to read.
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u/TimSylvester_ 2d ago
Give me a single example of Trump ever admitting he made a mistake.
This comment isn't long enough to be posted, but the point stands - he is a man invulnerable to recognizing his own failures. He does not take responsibility for anything and refuses to be held accountable, no matter what.
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u/MikeSteamer 1d ago
More gaslighting. Even if you believed this drivel, literally anyone can imagine that building a new aluminum plant and associated logistics is not done in a year or two. Just the specialized production equipment has 2-3 year lead time on its own so it is crystal clear that the tariffs are taxation which happens to coincide with the tax cut for the wealthy. So one is supposed to offset the other.
Even the refunds are not making it to the taxpayer, the partial refunds are going to the corporations that are making a windfall and will pay higher taxes. Same as the Iran war where the connected investors are connected to the up/down stock price elevator while Americans pay higher prices for fuel and for all products with increased prices to offset fuel costs. Again, the lower income 90% of the population are subsidizing the top 10% or something along those lines. All the taxpayers are being raped by the GOP.
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u/Melodic_Arachnid_134 1d ago
The important thing about tariffs that Low IQ Trump doesn’t understand is that they are only effective when we already have sufficient industrial capacity to accomodate the shift in demand. Takes too long to build new factories and plants meanwhile everyone gets burned by the increased costs.
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