aluminum

“Now that President Trump has won agreement to replace NAFTA with the USMCA — the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — he has an opportunity to build on that accomplishment, and broaden the benefits of trade to strengthen national security,” writes ARPN Principal Daniel McGroarty in a new op-ed for The Hill.

The next step, says McGroarty, would be the harnessing of “all the resources in North America, the full critical mineral and metals supply chains, to take manufacturing to a new level, and safeguard access to raw materials that are integral to the defense industrial base.”

His assessment follows on the heels of the just-released Defense Industrial Base Report the classified version of which details almost 300 defense supply chain vulnerabilities and sounds the alarm on our over-reliance on foreign – and mostly Chinese – mineral resources, which represents a “significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security.”

McGroarty outlines three immediate steps the United States should take to alleviate these risks:

1. Revitalizing the National Technology Industrial Base (NTIB) between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia,
2. signing USMCA Critical Mineral Defense Supply Chain Agreements to create a “North American common front on critical minerals” which harnesses “cross-border collaboration on critical mineral production and advanced materials processing;” and
3. ending the aluminum and steel tariffs on our USMCA partners to ensure that “the U.S. defense supply chain is once again fully integrated across North America” and to reaffirm the importance of an integrated U.S.-Canadian Defense Industrial Base which rests on nearly 80 years of deep defense cooperation.

These steps, he says, are “essential if the U.S. is to counter China’s economic aggression.”

The question is, will stakeholders use the momentum generated by the new trade agreement to “take the strategic North American alliance to a new level?”

Materials science continues to yield innovative discoveries at neck-breaking speed.   Followers of ARPN are aware of Scalmalloy – an “aluminum alloy powder ‘with almost the specific strength of titanium’ [used] to build incredible structures by fusing thin layers of the material together.”

One of its key components is Scandium – which explains the first two letters of the somewhat unusual name.  In the context of the lightweighting revolution, which has been marked by the “growing imperative to lightweight transportation, buildings, and infrastructure systems,” Scandium has become an indispensable tech metal.

Researchers at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer ILT have now found a way to successfully 3D print a high-performance scandium/aluminum alloy (Al-Mg-Sc-Zr) using selective laser melting (SLM) technology – a “specific 3D printing technique, which utilizes high power-density laser to fully melt and fuse metallic powders to produce near net-shape parts with near full density (up to 99.9% relative density).”

Already, Scandium is an indispensable material for aeronautics with Aluminium-Scandium alloys having helped reduce aircraft weights by 15% to 20%, without compromising the strength of the building material. 3D printed Scandium and Aluminum-based high-performance alloys as the one produced by the above-referenced researchers may become even more relevant as the U.S. Government embarks on a path to create a U.S. Space Force.

However, with demand for Scandium expected to rise tremendously, there are challenges on the horizon. As we have previously pointed out:

“While on paper, Scandium resources may in fact be abundant, it is rarely concentrated in nature, making commercially viable deposits extremely rare. Because it is at present largely recovered as a co-product during the processing of various Gateway Metals, including Tin and Nickel, total global production rates are quite low (see our previous post).  Scandium may also be present in certain Copper and Rare Earth deposits.”

In order to meet this anticipated jump in demand, several mining companies – most recently in Russia and Australia – have begun exploring the possibility of primary Scandium recovery.  In the U.S., which is currently 100% import dependent to meet our domestic Scandium needs and has to rely on China and Russia, developers of multi-metallic deposits are also studying the inclusion of scandium recovery into their project plans.

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Change cannot happen overnight – particularly in a regulatory environment that does not favor resource development.  From a U.S. perspective, much will depend on whether domestic stakeholders are able to improve our policy framework to unleash our own resource potential.”

A recent Bloomberg story we featured last week put a face on the specter of trade war over aluminum and steel, and retraced the history of this symbiotic U.S.- Canadian trade relationship and what our very own Dan McGroarty has called the “world’s most integrated defense industrial base.”   Digging a little deeper, a new Wall [...]

Last month, our very own Dan McGroarty argued in a piece for Investor’s Business Daily that the escalation of the trade war over U.S.-imposed trade tariffs on Canadian made aluminum and steel has serious implications not only for our economy, but also for the U.S. defense industrial base.  In it, he outlined the genesis of [...]

Against the backdrop of the recent escalation of the U.S.-Canada trade war, ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty argues in a new piece for Investor’s Business Daily that while “the focus has been on U.S.-imposed trade tariffs on Canadian-made aluminum and steel, and their economic impact,” the “damage the tariffs may do to the U.S. defense industrial base” [...]

Against the backdrop of growing threats to U.S. security – recent flash points involve Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – a new Presidential Executive Order “On Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States,” zeroes in on defense readiness. The E.O. requires heads from various [...]

Remember the Light Rider?  A few months ago, we highlighted this high-tech motorcycle, which, because it is held together by an intricate web of “Scalmalloy,” is perhaps the lightest motorcycle in the world. Scalmalloy is an “aluminum alloy powder ‘with almost the specific strength of titanium’ [used] to build incredible structures by fusing thin layers of the material together.” One [...]

The New Year is now a little over a week old and the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States is just around the corner.  And while some are still dwelling on 2016 (we offered our post mortem at the end of the year), the time has come to look at what’s in store. One of [...]

It’s that time of the year again.  And as people are gearing up for the New Year, we are taking the opportunity to take stock of the last twelve months, and want to highlight a few select notable developments of relevance to ARPN followers. From a mineral resource policy perspective, we saw some positive developments [...]

Over the course of the past few months, we have featured two classes of metals and minerals, which we believe deserve more attention than they are currently being awarded.  Expanding on the findings of our 2012 “Gateway Metals and the Foundations of American Technology” report, in which we focused on a group of five “Gateway” metals which [...]