Eli5:why is there an aluminum shortage in the US, right now?
In: Other
The US cannot produce enough aluminum to sustain itself currently, so it needs to buy imported aluminum. Problem is, there are tariffs and sanctions placed on ALL countries that produce primary aluminum.
Current events are not allowed. Better to check r/outoftheloop.
There’s a weird cycle with aluminum, when large scale consumers use aluminum, there’s also a lot of scrap sold back to the market which is then reconsumed by the makers. Once production stopped due to COVID, it broke the cycle, now anyone wanting to restart operations is doing so without access to a scrap market.
Basically imagine most cans are made from recycled cans, and when people stopped making and consuming cans, your material to make new cans dried up a lot.
Add to that many mines being shut down for quite a while and you compound the problem
Latest Answers