https://www.cnbc.com/2014/06/03/how-aluminum-became-a-cash-c...
In the referenced book, the author details how the aluminum cartel was dismantled under the threat of WWII needs because of their failure to promptly address the needs of the United States.
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9511/binczewski-9511.h...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aluminum-lawsuit-idUSKBN2...
https://ember-climate.org/commentary/2020/10/06/aluminium/
The aluminium sector has a pivotal role to play here. Accounting for 1.1 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year, it generates around 2% of global human-caused emissions. Demand for aluminium, an essential material for several key industries including construction, transportation and power transmission, is expected to grow by more than 50% by 2050. As such, emissions must be addressed now.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/the-aluminium-industr...
No, we aren't becoming less reliant on coal. We should be but we aren't. Look at [1]. We actually consume more coal, oil and gas each and every year.
If you mean America, then coal consumption is down by nearly 50% since 2000[1]. If you mean the EU, then you'll be pleased to know we've also reduced our coal consumption substantially.
The principle increase in coal use is China. They've almost 4x their use of coal in the last 20 years. They also are leading the world in construction of new coal consuming power plants -- both in China and elsewhere[2].
[1]https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-2020/demand [2]https://www.wired.com/story/china-is-still-building-an-insan...
Using electricity to heat anything is wasteful when it could be used to waste clock cycles on cryptocurrency instead, first.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/51115/did-napole...
Anyway until the late second half of the 1800's, it was considered as valuable as gold, if not more (article in French):
Wild stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...
Aluminum has well known fixed costs in smelters, it's one of those products they use as an example where it may make economic sense to keep a smelter going (even if incurring losses / ) because the cost of shutdown.
Ie, a potline may take up to a week just to "turn off" and a huge amount of effort - think a month of full time work + weeks of troubleshooting as annode effect issues, alumina concentration and other bits settle down. Don't you basically have to recondition (fully, replace all anodes, dig out the crust) the pots, and even then you may be taking a bit hit on pot life with the cool down / reheat cycle?
I know the US has "anti dumping" rules regarding sugar as well - which I've been told contributes to a fair bit of corn syrup use.
I'm not that hung-up on the US blocking imports of cheap materials (if that's what the US wants to do), but how does the US get some third party country to grab this quantity of metal? Ie, China could sell to other countries that are not as concerned about dumping. For example, why would a poor country without a local smelter even care about "dumping" - it would seem the cheap prices would be a subsidy in effect.
Because you can either be part of the group of powerful nations that rules the planet (including through various global and regional trade arrangements, international organizations, military power, sanctions, banking/finance and so on), or you can be on the outs with them and they may choose to brutalize you at some point in that case.
The US, as one example, has a lot of levers. If you decide to try to operate outside of its preferences, it can trivially wreck you if you're a small nation. China for its part increasingly swings a big influence hammer, which is why so many nations are very afraid to even offend them. If you're a stray midling country out there, you generally don't get to just do whatever you want to, even if you're not signed on to various limiting agreements around eg dumping. The more powerful nations have specific interests, a specific way they think the world should be, and they have no qualms about being randomly hypocritical (at your expense).
Even most larger nations have to be quite careful. The West is growing quite tired of Erdogan for example and they will further crash Turkey's economy (further amplify the damage Erdogan is already doing) if they think it'll help get rid of him. Turkey can rather easily be smashed at this juncture, potentially resulting in civil war, rolling instability for years or decades, quasi Syriaification.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3784270/Chinese-bil...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-chinese-billionaire-...
I'm a bit confused by the seizure. Ie, if US doesn't want the cheap aluminum -> let another country have it cheap?
That said, Biden does seem to be going big on tariffs.
"The decision is one of Mr. Biden’s first significant moves on trade and suggests that his administration may be inclined to maintain the type of hefty tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on foreign metals to protect domestic industry. That position found favor with unions, but disappointed industries and businesses that have argued the tariffs raise costs." - NY Times - Biden Reinstates Aluminum Tariffs in One of His First Trade Moves
So this story does seem to be continuing with efforts by Biden to keep imported prices higher and there may be an element of politics in some of this all.
After 10 years outside, it's probably covered in dust and grime, and gotten an oxide layer. It probably isn't immediately sellable to a car factory...
But it could be reprocessed very inexpensively and become sellable. The loss of value would probably be well under 1%.
People saying "it's so old, it's basically scrap" either don't know what they're talking about, or they're deliberately deceiving - and being market traders, I suspect the latter in the hopes of pushing market prices higher.
Aluminium has an oxide layer the second it comes into contact with air.
I would guess the reason is similar and would be weathering/erosion due to being outside and pelted with sand/rain/etc.
Why? No magnesium. And China don't let out its magnesium.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-27/magnesium-shortage-in...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium#Occurrence
OTOH, it's not used in huge quantities (vs. oil, coal, iron, etc.) - so it seem plausible that China could kinda corner the market. At a reasonable cost (for them). Especially if they're the ~only country bothering to run a strategy...
The materials are abundant in nature, however it's the ability or willingness to process those materials in country which is rare. For example, rare earths are dirty to process so developed countries have outsourced their pollution to China.
In 2015 and 2016 Vietnam's imports of aluminum were much larger than previous years and later years. The excess value over $4B (the level of subsequent years' imports) totals over $6B. I took 2015-16 to represent the surge of imports.
The price of Al seems to have been around 80 cents a pound at the end of 2016, http://m.kitco.com/getChartPage?symbol=al&width=438&height=2... (then select 5 years). At $1,600 a ton, that's nearly 4 million tons.
This more than covers the 1.8 million tons in the GVA stockpile.
Billets: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=%22aluminium+billets%22&tb... An example of dimensions: “Most of the produced billets by the South Aluminum Industries Complex are produced in the form of cylinders with a diameter of 280 (11 inches) and a length of 7,500 mm” and some details of their manufacturing process here: https://en.salcocompany.com/aluminum-billet/ Billets of various diameters are used in aluminium extrusion machines: https://www.aec.org/page/aluminum-extrusion-process-basics
Ingots are rolled to produce sheet, which I think is the majority usage by weight of Al: https://www.metalex.co.uk/expert-aluminium-plate-suppliers-e... “The rolling process kicks off with massive, pre-heated metal sheet ingots weighing as much as 20 tons. The ingots tend to be around six feet wide, twenty feet long and over two feet thick.”
The article's quality is poor. It wasn't worth my time to read.
