Canadians urge ban on potash sales to USA
- Thread starter Cypress
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Into the Night
Verified User
There are no potassium or potassium salts in basalt, dude.
Don't right-wingers ever think about the economics of business?
How economically viable is it to switch from natural geologic potash sources to manufacturing it from ash? What are the risks? Coal ash contains heavy metals like sulfur and mercury, which can be toxic to plants.
This is a complex economic and technical question you won't just be able to frantically Google a simple answer to. And if it really were economically and technically feasible we should already see widespread application of this in commercial agriculture.
Basalt is not a substitute for potash, but rather a source for potash. It is not a particularly good source for potash. If the Canadians double the cost of potash, and in response we use a source that is 100 times more expensive, then we have done more damage to our economy than the Canadians did.
Do you see how that works?
There is definitely potassium in basalt.
I wonder if this is what it felt like to be in the last days before the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Into the Night
Verified User
Sure. I run a business.
You can't manufacture potash from coal ash. The United States already has plenty of potash.
Coal ash contains no potassium or potassium salts. Sulfur is not a metal. Sulfur is used on plants, particularly roses. Coal is not mercury. Coal is not sulfur.
Complexity fallacy.
Google is not God, Sybil.
Coal ash contains no potassium nor potassium salts. You cannot make potash with it.
Into the Night
Verified User
Basalt is not potash. Basalt contains no potassium nor potassium salts.
It is not a source at all, Wally.
The Canadians can keep their potash. The United States already has plenty of it.
No, Wally. Your fear mongering won't work.
Into the Night
Verified User
Basalt contains no potassium nor any potassium salt, Wally.
Random phrase ignored.
You're just googling random things on the internet without putting the slightest thought into whether this is an economically and technically viable substitute for Canadian geologic sources of potash for large scale commercial agriculture.
We're not talking about small scale backyard gardening here.
Since basalt is a hard igneous rock found only in volcanic sources, and basalt is not known to be heavily enriched in potassium, my educated guess is that your idea is not economically viable for large scale American commercial agriculture, compared to natural Canadian sources of potash.
Into the Night
Verified User
Bassalt contains no potassium nor potassium salts, Wally. Wikipedia is wrong, yet again.
Basalt - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
My point was that Canada has no lock on potash and if it comes to it, other countries will find alternatives and then Canada is effectively put out of business. Consumers will generally choose the cheapest and easiest source for a suitable material. If one goes away, somebody will fill the need, even if it's at a somewhat higher price, in its stead.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
On the other hand, potash can be made from evaporites of brine. The US already has some production of it by this method near Salt Lake City, for example, using the salt flats there as source material. That could be expanded, along with other such locations like the Salton Sea or Owens Lake in California, as two examples.
According to Google AI
Basalt contains about 0.8 percent potassium.
The prairie evaporite formation in Saskatchewan, which contains the main minerals mined for potassium, has the following potassium concentrations:
Sylvite has 52.4 percent potassium.
Carnallite has 14.1 percent potassium.
The Canadian evaporite minerals have anywhere from 17 to 65 times higher concentrations of potassium as does basalt.
Basalt is not anywhere remotely in the ballpark in terms of potassium content to these Canadian evaporite mineral deposits, and consequently basalt cannot possibly be an economically viable potassium alternative for large scale commercial agriculture in America.
Canada has the cheap potash, and they were willing to sell it to us. When you have to make massive investments to produce something, that drives the price up insanely. Which means if we lose Canada as a source of cheap potash, look at paying ten or a hundred times as much, just to make the original infrastructure we would need. Evaporating ponds are not cheap.
And years of delays.
Life does not have simple answers. Hard work is required.
Salt Lake and Eastern California are deserts.
Unless you plan to evaporate the Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake, and the Salton Sea (which would be massive environmental catastrophes), you would have to figure out how to import massive amounts of water into these arid desert areas to have an evaporation industrial process at the scale needed for US commercial agriculture.
The Canadian Prairie Evaporite Formation extends over thousands of square miles, with potash mineral deposits hundreds of feet thick, and well established mining and distribution operations already in place. It's by far the largest source of economically viable potash reserves in the world.
You can't possibly duplicate that or replace that at a scale required by American commercial agriculture.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
That's the bottom line: Canada's potash is cheap. That doesn't mean it can't be replaced from other sources, particularly domestic ones because it can be.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
Owens Lake and the Salton Sea ARE massive environmental catastrophes and have been for decades. This would put a nasty biproduct of those catastrophes to good use and help clean them up.
If it costs too much, it prices our food out of the market. Remember we are talking about the inputs to something that we export.
Somehow that is something trump and the trumpers always forget. They say tariffs will help American manufacturers, but forget that includes tariffs on the inputs that American manufacturers count on.
It is even worse than that for the car industry. A part from Mexico will be used in an American system, that will be part of a Canadian system, that in turn will be part of a Mexican system... that is finally put in an American car. A car as it is built can cross the border dozen times. Each time it crosses into the USA, it gets another hit from American tariffs. A foreign car would only have to pay once, but American built cars could be looking at tariffs of well over 100%.
T. A. Gardner
Thread Killer
No, it means farmers find an alternative that works for them. The market isn't static.
Only to the extent that a domestic alternative doesn't exist and cannot be had. In the case of potash, there are domestic alternatives. These simply haven't been developed because there are cheaper sources that can be imported. In some cases, those imports are propped up by their government using subsidies or price controls.
As an historical example: In the 1920's and 30's Japan imported virtually all of their oil. They knew oil existed in the puppet state Manchukuo, but didn't develop it because it was cheaper and easier to import it. That led to the events that caused, in large part, the Pacific War.
Mexico primarily assembles cars with parts made elsewhere. They don't make most of the parts themselves. The same is true of Canadian car manufacturing. What you are looking for is something like the "Chicken tax" on light trucks.
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Chicken Tax: What it Is, How it Got the Name
The Chicken Tax began 50 years ago when Europeans set a tariff on American chickens—the U.S. retaliated with a 25% tariff on imported light trucks.
That one dates to LBJ and is still in place today. What Japan did in that case was move their light truck (pickup truck) manufacturing to the US to avoid the tax and you can see the outcome here today where Japanese companies dominate the small pickup truck market and making inroads into the full-size market.
In the short run, tariffs can hurt, but in the long run targeted ones can definitely build the domestic economy where the country imposing them has a big share of the market.