As Bloomberg and others previewed yesterday, on Wednesday morning the Trump administration announced it has launched a probe whether uranium imports threaten national security, a move which may result in tariffs on the metal.
According to the Commerce Department, the probe will determine “whether the present quantity and circumstances of uranium ore and product imports into the U.S. threaten to impair the national security.” The probe will cover the entire uranium sector, from the mining industry to enrichment, defense and industrial consumption.
In a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Department of Defense will be consulted about national defense requirements for uranium, Bloomberg reported.
The probe was initiated when US uranium producers Energy Fuels Inc. and Ur-Energy Inc. filed a petition in January asking the Commerce Department to investigate the matter under Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act; this is the same provision the president used to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
U.S. industry participants want the government to shield them from competition from state-owned companies in countries including Russia and Kazakhstan. The problem is that any stumbling blocks to uranium imports could have a drastic impact on various downstream industries: U.S. production of uranium necessary for military and electric power has dropped to just 5% of domestic consumption, from 49 percent, said Ross.
A uranium investigation would add to further trade tensions which the IMF, and Wall Street, believe represent the biggest “tail risk” risk to the global economy. And, as Bloomberg adds, “imposing uranium duties would deal another blow to nuclear power plants already struggling with low electricity prices and flat demand.”
Canada and Kazakhstan are the main sources of U.S. uranium imports, each accounting for about a quarter of the total, followed by Australia, Russia and Uzbekistan, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Almost 90% of uranium delivered to U.S. reactors was from foreign nations in 2016, according to the government agency, indicating that just like rare earth metals, if America’s trading partners wanted to put the US economy in a vise, they could simply stop exporting uranium to the US and watch as the country’s military and power generation sectors grind to a halt.
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