Tariffs Turn Aluminum Maker Rio Tinto Into a Buyer in US Market
Aluminum billets at a Rio Tinto casting center in Quebec.
Photographer: Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg
Rio Tinto Group, one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, runs a refinery and five smelters in Canada’s Quebec province, with most of the metal flowing south to the US market.
Now, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs, it’s suddenly cheaper for Rio to buy aluminum in the US and resell it to American customers rather than move its own metal across the border.