Aluminum is a perfect case in point. It is processed from a form of rock called bauxite, which is hardly found anywhere in the world. Something like 95% of the bauxite in the world is mined in just ten countries, and I believe only one of them (Brazil) is even in the Western Hemisphere.
Aluminum producers in the U.S. must love a tariff on imported aluminum, but you can be damn sure they'd be howling with outrage over a tariff on imported bauxite.
Isn’t most Aluminum recycled?
Alumina extracted from bauxite ore (10 to 25 percent content) is electrically processed to get aluminum. The “Red Mud” alkali heavy waste from Bauxite processing is a big problem, just like any other tailing storage from mining with chemical extraction.
Virtually all the raw ore is found in the tropics. The separated aluminum oxides are transported for the metal’s extraction. Most of the aluminum production favors access of the lower cost hydroelectric facilities as extraction is a purely electrically driven process.
Jamaica Mon. Massive bauxite deposits.
Australia remains the world’s largest bauxite producer with output of 63 million tonnes in 2008, the year preceding the global economic downturn which had a deep impact on the bauxite/alumina industry. In second place was China at 32 million tonnes followed by Brazil (25 million tonnes), India (20 million tonnes) and Guinea (18 million tonnes). Jamaica had by then fallen to sixth place in the world, producing 14.6 million tonnes of bauxite... Jamaica’s share of world bauxite output has therefore fallen from 18.1% in the 1970s to about 7.1% of total world production of 205 million tonnes in 2008.
With over one-half of the country’s alumina capacity still closed in 2012, and output hovering around the 10 million tonne per annum mark, Jamaica’s position in the world industry would have experienced further slippage.
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Shipping would be cheap and they have a lot of Bauxite