A fuel-driven economy
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How is President Trump's war on Iran affecting oil prices?
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It's a commodities kind of day today. We're going to go a little sideways, though, from American public media. This is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risdell. It is Tuesday, today, the very last day of March 2026. Good as it always is to have you along, everybody. Commodities is where the opening stanzas of the program today find us. Not, though, the usual suspect because fine, sure, oil, important, yes, but not the only globally critical item that is in the news. We're going to do a commodities one, two today, aluminum and then coal. Aluminum prices have been rising since the war started. Attacks on smelters, you've probably heard of those. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, you've definitely heard of that. Also, the rising cost of the energy that those smelters need. Prices are up around 10% since the start of the war.
That's according to CRU Group. And that only adds to the 50% tariff that businesses have been paying on imported metals. So Marketplace's Justin Ho called some businesses that rely on aluminum to find out how they're being affected and what they're going to do about it. Wolf Tooth Components is a bike parts manufacturer based near Minneapolis that makes hundreds of different products, including gears, pedals, and seat posts.
I would say aluminum's in probably 90% of our products.
That's co-owner Brendan Moore. He says ever since the war started, the price of the aluminum he buys has risen about 10%, even though the company mostly uses aluminum that's made in the U.S.
U.S. aluminum rises along with the broader commodity, and so U.S. prices have gone up, too.
Thing is, Moore says there's not a lot he can do about that.
You know, you go to a restaurant and the lobster on the menu will say market rate. We don't get to say that on our components.
Our components have a fixed price. Moore says raising his prices is risky. It involves coordinating with dealers across the country, and it can tick off his customers. So instead, the company's just going to eat the cost and hold prices steady. Moore says he'd rather focus on the things he can control.
The things you can control are efficiency, how well we sell and market the product.
Businesses can't make plans around the recent aluminum price spike because we don't know how long this war is going to keep pushing up prices, says Vidya Mani, a visiting professor at Cornell University.
Two months down the line, I might be looking at a 50% increase. Four months down the line, I might be looking at a 70% increase.
Plus, the war isn't only making aluminum more expensive, it's also causing actual shortages, says Ross Dracken with CRU Group.
In Japan and South Korea, some of the auto wheel manufacturers that make aluminum wheels have had to cut their production because they can't get the material from the Middle East.
That said, the U.S. has levied tariffs on imported aluminum ever since 2018, so many businesses can draw from their experiences with tariffs.
The new increases from the Iran war just falls right into our same playbook.
That's Chris Blench, CEO of Mavericks Manufacturing Partners, a company near San Diego that makes parts for nuclear power plants and the military. Blench says the company's playbook is simple.
Ever since the trade policies have been driving prices up on our metals, our raw material inputs, we've just been passing it on. Lynch says he knows the strategy will work, especially since everyone he's competing against is in the same boat. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Commodity number two in our hit parade today is a nod to the reality that one commodity's crisis is another's opportunity. Oil was down today, yes, but still above $100 a barrel. That's for both benchmarks, Brent Crude and West Texas. Coal, though, is having a moment because even though a lot of countries have been trying to phase out their use of it, demand of late is going up in Asia in particular.
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