How Trump’s Trade War Undermines the US Military; Record for Right to Repair
And more about the real costs of renewable energy and digital tech, and how we can do better.
How Trump’s Trade War Undermines the US Military
By the time you’re reading this, President Trump may well have flip-flopped once again and backed away from imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico. If he hasn’t, then among the many consequences will be a blow to America’s defense industry, and to America’s efforts to free itself from reliance on China for critical metals.
As of March 4, the US slapped 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, its two biggest trading partners, in what The Economist calls “the most extreme and most dangerous act of protectionism by an American president in nearly a century.” Canada is the United States’ biggest single source of minerals, providing about $47 billion worth each year, including critical metals like nickel, copper and niobium. Mexico and China are neck and neck for second place.
At a minimum, the tariffs will make it more expensive, and more difficult, for American manufacturers of fighter jets, tanks, and other military technology, not to mention electric vehicles, computer chips, and hospital equipment, to get their hands on key metals they need.
Take nickel, for instance. It “is a critical material in many military applications,” explains Gracelin Baskaran of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s a vital component in the steel alloys used in … armor plating for vehicles, ships, and personnel equipment.” Also, “nickel-based superalloys are essential in jet engines for military aircraft.”
Roughly half of America’s nickel comes from Canada. The US has only a single nickel mine, but no refineries—so even the output from that one mine gets sent to Canada to be refined, and then sold back to US companies. Now, however, in response to the tariffs, the premier of Ontario, source of most of that nickel, has threatened to stop selling it to the US.
Meanwhile, the premier of British Columbia has also suggested that his province could ban sales to the US of germanium, used in military equipment like night vision goggles, as well as solar panels and fibre optics. That would present a real problem to US manufacturers, since China, the world’s top producer, already cut off sales of that metal back in December. China also banned sales to the US of gallium, another metal with many military applications. The US produces zero gallium. Guess who does? Ontario.
China has banned or restricted exports to the US of a whole basket of critical metals since Trump took office. As I wrote here recently, those moves are “a dire reminder that China dominates the supply chains of virtually all the metals we need for the energy transition and digital technology.” Breaking that dominance has been a high-priority US goal for years now. Canada should be a prime partner in that effort. Instead, the US is raising barriers to Canadian metals that could replace Chinese supplies.
I get the basic argument for tariffs: make it harder for foreigners to sell stuff in your country in order to protect your own domestic industries. That seems to be Trump’s real goal in targeting Canada, not the mostly imaginary southbound flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl.
I’m no economist, but tariffs do seem like a plausible tactic in certain circumstances. But I can’t see how they help the US at all with respect to critical metals. Maybe high tariffs on metals combined with a rollback of environmental regulations will lead to more mining and refining in the US. Maybe. But at best, that will take many years.
Meanwhile, the tariffs will damage American industries, raise prices on American citizens, and alienate American allies. Tariffs are the kind of thing you want to apply with a carefully handled scalpel. Instead, Trump is swinging a chainsaw. You can really hurt yourself that way.
The Right to Repair Hits 50 States!
Major milestone for the campaign to force electronics manufacturers to make it easier for regular folks to fix their products: as of February, Right to Repair bills have been introduced in all 50 American states.
OK, some of those bills have stalled out, but according to activist groups iFixit and PIRG, there is active legislation underway in at least 24 states. And such bills have already passed into law in five states. Residents of New York, California, Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado have won the right to be able to get their hands on the parts, tools and documentation they need to repair a range of electronic products.
As I explained last year:
“Digital gadgets in particular are notoriously difficult to fix. You can’t just open them up to have a look inside, the way you can open the hood of your car. You certainly can’t replace their dead batteries the way you can with your TV remote. That’s because the electronics industry deliberately makes their products difficult to repair. ... The goal is to nudge customers into buying new models rather than repairing their old ones.”
“All of this matters not only because repairing, rather than replacing, broken gadgets can save consumers money, but because those gadgets are full of critical metals, from the nickel in their batteries to the copper in their wiring. The longer they stay in use, the fewer virgin metals that need to be dug up to replace them. … What’s more, discarded electronic gadgets are rarely recycled; usually, they get thrown out, adding to the mountains of toxic electronic waste growing by the day all over the world.”
“Americans are fed up with all the ways in which manufacturers of everything from toasters to tractors frustrate or block repairs,” said PIRG’s Senior Right to Repair Campaign Director Nathan Proctor. “Lawmakers are hearing that and taking action.”
Book News
I had a great conversation about the book with host Matt Galloway on CBC’s #1 news-talk show, The Current. And another with Lisa McRee on LA Times Today about why the U.S. is so interested in getting its hands on Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Next week, on Sunday, March 15, I’ll be appearing at the Tucson Festival of Books. I’ll be doing two panels with some stellar fellow writers, including Ernest Scheyder, Edward Humes and Rosanna Xia. It’s a great festival, and is also free, so if you’re anywhere near Arizona that weekend, come check it out!
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