Canada supplies key minerals for US weapons systems

Canada supplies a large share of the metals that sit inside US weapons systems, even as Donald Trump publicly dismisses the country as dispensable. In late August, during trade talks with Canada, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”, according to a Guardian essay by journalist Vince Beiser. The same piece cites Canada as the United States’ biggest foreign source of minerals, supplying about $47 billion worth each year.

Beiser’s inventory is a reminder that modern industrial power is less about slogans than about refineries, grids and transport corridors. He notes that around 60% of the aluminium used annually in the US comes from Canada, produced with cheap electricity generated by remote rivers. Aluminium is not an abstract input: the US military uses it for shell casings, ship hulls and aircraft fuselages, and Beiser writes that an F-35 airframe is roughly 40% aluminium. Trump himself, Beiser adds, said in the previous month that the US “desperately needs” aluminium and that most of it comes from Canada.

The trade-policy details in the essay show how dependency quietly shapes what governments can credibly threaten. The US announced new 50% import tariffs on Canadian products but exempted almost all metals, Beiser reports. In other words, the headline measure spared the category that would most quickly ricochet into US manufacturing and defence procurement. Canadian politicians have also signalled they understand where leverage sits: after trade talks collapsed, Ontario premier Doug Ford threatened to cut off nickel exports to the US if tensions increased. Beiser writes the US gets about half its nickel from Canada, and that the US has only one nickel mine but no refineries—ore is sent to Canada for refining and then sold back to US companies.

Beiser extends the list to other materials whose supply chains are already tangled with geopolitics. British Columbia’s premier floated a possible ban on germanium exports; Beiser notes germanium’s role in night-vision goggles and laser rangefinders, and that China produces most of the world’s germanium but has largely stopped selling it to the US. China has also restricted gallium exports, and Beiser writes the US produces no primary gallium; a new gallium plant is scheduled to open next year in Canada. He adds that Canada supplies much of the uranium used by US nuclear reactors, which generate nearly 20% of US electricity, and that almost 90% of the potash used by US farmers comes from Canada.

The essay’s underlying constraint is time. The US has deposits of many critical metals, Beiser writes, but financing and regulatory approvals make new mines slow and expensive, and domestically produced metals often cost more. Replacing Canada would mean rebuilding supply chains that already run both ways across the border—ore one direction, refined product the other—while the political theatre continues.

The US exempted most Canadian metals from its new tariffs, Beiser notes. The message to voters was confrontation; the message to the procurement system was continuity.