Let me tell you a little story about what happens when politicians who don’t understand the real world try to fix it with a sledgehammer.
A while back, President Donald Trump slapped a 50% tariff—that’s a fancy word for tax—on aluminum coming into the U.S. from other countries. He said it would “protect American jobs.” Sounds good on a bumper sticker, right?
But here’s what really happened.
Rio Tinto, a giant mining company based in Britain and Australia, runs a bunch of aluminum plants in Quebec, Canada. They usually make their aluminum up there using cheap hydropower, then ship it down to the U.S. to sell.
After the tariff? It actually became cheaper for Rio to stop selling its own aluminum and start buying aluminum already inside the U.S.—some of it from competitors—and resell that to American buyers. Yeah, you read that right: a foreign company is buying American aluminum and turning a profit, instead of using its own supply.
Why? Because the tariff jacked up prices so high that it made more sense to flip American metal than move their own across the border.
And it gets dumber.
The U.S. doesn’t even produce enough aluminum to meet our own needs. We’ve only got four smelters left running in the whole country. Four! That’s not “bringing jobs back.” That’s “good luck finding the metal.”
Meanwhile, prices are soaring. The cost to deliver aluminum in the U.S.—what the industry calls the Midwest premium—has shot up 81% since June. So if you’re a business that builds trucks, cans, planes, or beer kegs, guess what? You’re paying a whole lot more, even though the metal hasn’t changed one bit.
And the big American producers? They’re hurting too. Alcoa, the biggest U.S. aluminum company, lost $135 million because of these tariffs. That’s right—American companies are taking hits from policies that were supposed to help them.
Rio Tinto? Oh, they’re doing just fine as any red-blooded capitalist. They admit the tariffs cost them $321 million in the first half of the year—but they also said they’ve made most of that back by charging higher prices in the U.S. That’s what happens when you raise the price floor and the ceiling at the same time. Somebody always makes a buck.
Let’s break it down plain:
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Rio Tinto buys U.S. aluminum.
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Sells it back to U.S. customers.
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At inflated prices.
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While American smelters can’t keep up.
- Which raises the price even more.
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And American companies lose money.
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And American consumers pay more.
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And yet, Washington calls this a win.
This isn’t trade policy. It’s a shell game. The tariffs were meant to punish foreign companies, but they ended up punishing Americans—our businesses, our workers, and anyone who uses aluminum, which is… well, just about everyone.
So the next time a politician tells you tariffs are “easy to win,” remember this little tale of Canadian aluminum, rising prices, and corporate workarounds. Because while the headlines say “Made in America,” the fine print says Made More Expensive by Washington.
And just to rub a little more salt in the wound—while all this was happening, Rio Tinto made a power move and bought U.S.-based Arcadium Lithium for $6.7 billion. That’s right—cash deal. Why? Because lithium is the magic ingredient in electric vehicle batteries and energy storage tech. And with that deal, Rio just became the world’s third-largest lithium producer.
So while we’re stumbling over tariffs, Rio is thinking ten steps ahead and acquiring American metals—cornering the next critical material market. At the same time, politicians here are busy patting themselves on the back for “protecting” American metal.