IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/inecol/v12y2008i5-6p739-753.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The “Hidden” Trade of Metals in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremiah Johnson
  • T. E. Graedel

Abstract

type="main" xml:lang="en"> The transport of ore and refined metals into and from countries has long been quantified, both because of its financial implications and because of the relative ease of tracking those flows. This information says little, however, about the net trade of metal in all its forms, particularly “semiproducts,” such as sheet and wire, and metal in traded products (MTP). A comprehensive analysis for the United States for copper, lead, zinc, chromium, and silver, in which all trade flows are included, demonstrates that MTP flows can often be a large factor in determining a country's import/export dependence, accounting for between 13% (zinc) and 57% (silver) of traded metal in all forms. A methodology was created to calculate the end user net import reliance, which is the net import of metal contained in ore, concentrate, refined forms, and semi-manufactured and finished products, plus any releases of metal from government or producer stocks, as a function of the flow of metal into end use by consumers. For all five metals, this calculation showed a higher reliance on imports than calculations that solely examine ore, concentrate, and refined metals. This suggests that the metal contained in semi-manufactured and finished products increases U.S. material import vulnerability. However, the in-use stocks of these metals contained in products may serve as a potential resource, serving to mitigate this vulnerability. Graphical representations of metal trade in all forms by geographical origin and destination are provided to characterize the nature of the trade and provide information that would be useful in characterizing U.S. import vulnerability.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremiah Johnson & T. E. Graedel, 2008. "The “Hidden” Trade of Metals in the United States," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 12(5-6), pages 739-753, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:inecol:v:12:y:2008:i:5-6:p:739-753
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2008.00092.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ian Harker, R. & Lutz, Timothy M., 1990. "Securities of mineral supplies," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 115-127, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. McMillan, Colin A. & Moore, Michael R. & Keoleian, Gregory A. & Bulkley, Jonathan W., 2010. "Quantifying U.S. aluminum in-use stocks and their relationship with economic output," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 2606-2613, October.
    2. Wei-Qiang Chen & Zi-Jie Ma & Stefan Pauliuk & Tao Wang, 2019. "Physical and Monetary Methods for Estimating the Hidden Trade of Materials," Resources, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-13, May.
    3. Helga Weisz & Heinz Schandl, 2008. "Materials Use Across World Regions," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 12(5-6), pages 629-636, October.
    4. Zhang, Ling & Wang, Liang & Wang, Miaomiao & Yuan, Zengwei, 2024. "Multilevel analysis of copper resource reallocation in the anthroposphere through international trade," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    5. Xinxi Chen & Jiansu Mao & Hezhong Tian, 2020. "Analysis of China’s Iron Trade Flow: Quantity, Value and Regional Pattern," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(24), pages 1-12, December.
    6. Elisa Alonso & David Pineault & Nedal T. Nassar, 2023. "Streamlined approach for assessing embedded consumption of lithium and cobalt in the United States," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 27(1), pages 33-42, February.
    7. Ren, Shuai & Li, Huajiao & Wang, Yanli & Guo, Chen & Feng, Sida & Wang, Xingxing, 2021. "Comparative study of the China and U.S. import trade structure based on the global chromium ore trade network," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Long Zhang & Wuliyasu Bai & Jing Yu & Linmao Ma & Jingzheng Ren & Weishi Zhang & Yuanzheng Cui, 2018. "Critical Mineral Security in China: An Evaluation Based on Hybrid MCDM Methods," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-21, November.
    2. Song, Malin & Xie, Qianjiao & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Yao, Xin, 2023. "Economic growth and security from the perspective of natural resource assets," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    3. Wang, Xiaolin & Qiu, Yangyang & Chen, Jun & Hu, Xiangping, 2022. "Evaluating natural gas supply security in China: An exhaustible resource market equilibrium model," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:inecol:v:12:y:2008:i:5-6:p:739-753. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1088-1980 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.