The U.S. Has a Pig Iron Problem

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Everybody is worried about rebuilding our missile arsenal after the war of the run. And this video is about that kind of. It's also about that strange obsession that President Trump had with ending the war in Ukraine, even if it was on bad terms for Ukraine. And it also has to do with an industrial input that really isn't manufactured by the US anymore. And it isn't as sexy as data centers or AI or robots. And if you were a banker and somebody came to you with an idea for this thing, you would probably get laughed out of the room.

[00:00:37]It's pig iron and we don't have enough of it to make the stuff that makes the stuff that we need to defend this country. So why don't we have enough pig iron? Well, three reasons or at least three layers. The first is businesses.

[00:00:50]businesses, manufacturers, miners, they weren't really required to look at supply chain from a national security lens. I mean, it is a global economy. My this meeting could have been SIGN shirt is made from Egyptian cotton that was manufactured in California and then printed in Texas. Get it at Bunker Branding. It's a great thing to wear in the skiff. But, you know, that's just a shirt. Imagine all the other stuff. And also imagine how dirty it is to produce pig iron. We just started importing a lot of these components when iron and steel kind of went bust in this country because there's some pretty strict regulatory practices to the steel industry because it's dirty and it's toxic and why not just outsource all that dirty toxic stuff to Russia and India and China let them pollute their own country. Second reason is metal metological issues. Steel is recyclable sort of right. More scrap introduction into a product makes the alloy weaker and inferior inputs inferior ores lead to inferior pig iron which is passed on to the alloys that we make which goes into the steel which goes into the destroyers that we build. And finally, the biggest world ender is that we only have like five large pig iron mines in America. There's Menitto mine in Minnesota, Tilden Mine in Michigan, Hibbing Takonite Mines in Minnesota, uh TTAC mine in Minnesota, and United States Talcanite mine in Minnesota. And we've really only got six companies that can make pig iron into steel at scale.

[00:02:32]US Steel, Cleveland Cliffs, North American Iron Steel Co. and Newore Corporation.

[00:02:37]It's like actually only five. I mean, look, ask yourself this. Do you know anybody who works in a mine or at a steel company, right? You know, uh I once said that the computer chips of today are the steel of World War II.

[00:02:53]Back in World War II, if you couldn't make steel, you couldn't make tanks, you couldn't make ships. Today, if you can't make chips, you don't have weapons.

[00:02:59]Well, IT TURNS OUT STEEL IS PRETTY DARN IMPORTANT, TOO.

[00:03:04]You know, I keep saying pig iron so much. I'm kind of reminded of that Johnny Cash cover Rock Island line. I fooled you. I fooled you. I got pig iron. I got old pig iron. You know, the problem is we don't got pig iron. You know what?

[00:03:21]I feel a song coming on.

[00:03:44]Well, Russia it dug down deep where the black dirt lies in the worm sleep and they picked up half the world with a pickaxe of eyes as best in the lungs and diamonds in the crown. Platium in the tailpipe of the car breaking down. They said we just country with snow and missile crews.

[00:04:02]They make 56% of the asbesus you breathe and 31% of the diamonds you leave on the finger of that babushka you met in Kursk.

[00:04:11]So grab that shovel and grab your fuse.

[00:04:13]We don't want to get the pig on blues cuz America and easy inputs for a steel.

[00:04:19]Well, the rail calls roll and the furnace squeals from the mind of the mill to the shipyard ke America and easy inputs for our steel.

[00:04:28]Well, Russia is fourth in phosphate rock as well as lime, silver, and noinium stock and all those magnesium compounds for your aerospace needs. They're fifth in aluminum, arsenic, too, helium iron, or just to name a few. But America needs pig iron if we're going to make that steel.

[00:04:46]So, grab that shovel and grab your fuse.

[00:04:48]We don't want to get the pig arm blues cuz America and easy inputs for our steel.

[00:04:54]Well, the rail calls roll and the furnace squeals from the mind of the mill to the shipyard ke. America and easy inputs for our steel.

[00:05:03]So when somebody tells you wars are fought with tanks, tell them tanks need metals and metals come from banks and banks fund the mines that have all gone out of style. Cuz war ain't always about the missile or the drone. Sometimes the stuff buried under the stone and we got to dig it out if we want to defend this land.

[00:05:21]So grab that shovel and grab your fuse.

[00:05:23]We don't want to get the big arm blues cuz America needs the inputs for our steel.

[00:05:29]Well, the rail calls rolling the furnace squeals from the mind of the mill to the shipyard ke. America and easy inputs for our steel.

[00:05:38]So grab that shovel and grab your fuse.

[00:05:40]We don't want to get the pig on blues cuz America and easy inputs for our steel.

[00:05:47]Well, the rail calls roll and the furnace squeals from the mind of the mill to the shipyard ke for our steel.

[00:06:20]I'll tell you this, you're not going to get that from Preston Stewart. Look, uh, nodule grade pig iron, well, little known to those outside of key industries, is the lynch pin of American military capabilities. Without pig iron, it would be impossible to build a bunch of things upstream. What does this mean?

[00:06:38]No rare earth mining, no magnet production equipment, no crawl process, which means no sponge titanium, no naval plate armor, no pressure steel for submarines, uh no nuclear deterrent components. Iron production and a specific kind of iron production is key to maintaining a healthy American defense. Pig iron is this intermediate product of smelting iron ore with coke.

[00:07:05]Not that Coke, Gary.

[00:07:06]>> Coke. Contrary to popular belief, it's not just a beverage.

[00:07:11]>> Yeah, that kind of Coke, you know, and and it's a kind of fuel that's used in blast furnaces, which turn iron ore into iron, usually with limestone as a flux, which reduces the melting point. Pig iron has a very high carbon content, typically 4%, which makes it brittle and not really useful directly as material except for very limited applications.

[00:07:33]Really, it's an intermediary or sacrificial material used in making something else. Pig iron is the main ingredient in upstream steels. The most common pathway to produce steel is through either a blast furnace or a basic oxygen furnace or BOF. Steel is an alloy made up of iron and has less than 2% carbon along some other stuff tossed in chromium, nickel for stainless steel or maganese and tungsten for hardened steel. And these steel alloys can include additives from like 1 to 10%.

[00:08:07]And it all begins with pulling stuff out of the mine. You know, the kind of mines that would get you laughed out of the bank if you went there and asked for a loan to open one, which is kind of the first problem. Iron ore is obtained from open cast mines and then crushed and uh kind of concentrated into pellets basically small iron ore balls. Uh you also might make center which is iron ore lumps baked with coke or coal. Iron is mined in about 50 countries the majority of it originating from Brazil, Australia, China, India, the US and Russia. To produce pig iron we also need to have coke, limestone and ferrris scrap. basically the stuff from the junkyard. These raw materials are then turned into pig iron using one of two methods. By either charging the iron ore and coke in a blast furnace or by reducing iron ore uh using natural gas and lowquality coke. The blast furnace method uses center pellets, lump ore and coke. All the inputs are charged on top of the furnace and heated to remove the oxygen from the iron ore and produce the hot metal. Second process known as direct reduction uses pellets, lump or natural gas and lowquality coke to kind of reduce the iron ore. Pellets and lump are heated under pressure in the presence of natural gas uh to create this directly reduced iron or DRRi. By the third phase of this process, we are ready to produce steel which is done by oxidizing the hot metal or the directly reduced iron we made in the previous process. There's three kind of furnaces that do that. the basic oxygen furnace, open hearth furnace, and the electric arc furnace. The basic oxygen furnace has oxygen kind of injected into the metal to remove carbon and other impurities than the metal. The open hearth furnace is similar to a basic oxygen furnace, but it tends to be slower, requires more energy. Uh, it's less cost effective. This kind of furnace is actually obsolete. But I'm just telling you about it because I know there's going to be people in the COMMENTS OR WHAT ABOUT, RIGHT? This really hasn't been widely used in some time. And both a basic oxygen furnace and open hearth furnaces have energydriven processes. The electric arc furnace takes a full charge of scrap or directly reduced iron and mixes in electricity to kind of melt the charge or material inside the furnace. Okay, you showed up for a Ryan McBTH video and you got a lecture about steel. So here's why this is important. And according to a recent report by Corgi Global, my old boss Adam Crafts Company, the US merchant pig iron market, the open market supply available to non-integrated foundaries and specialty mills has effectively collapsed without a plentiful supply of domestically sourced pig iron. We're talking about some serious pain points for upstream processes that impact national defense.

[00:10:56]We're all worried about building freaking Patriot missiles. We can barely make the stuff that makes the missile.

[00:11:02]Ah, >> Corgi Global also found that upstream layers of supply chain rest on supplier networks that either single sourced, foreign sourced, or both. Pig iron isn't the only choke point for American military production. We also have to worry about critical minerals produced in countries like China. About 90% of the world's cobalt, graphite, lthium comes from China. You know, uh, prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022, Russia was also America's biggest foreign supplier of pig iron. You starting TO PICK UP WHAT I'M PUTTING DOWN HERE?

[00:11:33]>> I CAN'T GET YOU WITH THIS.

[00:11:35]>> Kind of understanding why the president originally wanted the peace deal between Russia and Ukraine as fast as freaking possible, no matter how bad the deal was for Ukraine. With a potential conflict arising in China, the United States, pains me to say, I mean, almost needs an open Russia to supply critical minerals.

[00:11:56]And these include metals like rare earths and also pig iron. According to a 2025 US Geological Survey report entitled, "The mineral industry of Russia, the Russian Federation next to China is a key player in critical minerals in production spanning two continents. Its geological diversity is key to its potential dominance in these air areas. And there's few alternatives to Russia, even for the United States.

[00:12:23]Without alternatives to China and sagging or lacking domestic options, Russia is looking like a different piece of long-term calculus in the fight against China. Alternatively, we do have Japan who can produce pig iron at a high rate, as can South Korea. However, again, the problem becomes, how do we get all we need in a fight against China? Can we domestically source and produce what we need? I mean, unless we start cutting regulations and start making opening mines easier, it ain't looking good. Who wants to work in a mine?

[00:12:55]And it also depends on a lot of factors, investments, targeted policies. So, uh, can we do it before the crunch? I mean, before China begins signaling that they're going to attack Taiwan.

[00:13:08]It's really hard to say, but it does explain why the US government has been kind of pushing and proddding the Russian Federation to make some sort of peace deal with Ukraine. I mean, it's an uncomfortable reality. For 30 years, America optimized for efficiency, right?

[00:13:23]We closed down the mines. We closed down the mills. We optimized for shareholder value. We prioritized uh quarterly profits. Uh and we moved those dirty industries so we could pretend we had evolved past them. And in the process, we forgot something very important.

[00:13:41]Civilization still runs on pulling iron ore out of the ground. And we better start doing it again.

[00:13:48]>> America runs iron ore. Grab my uh this meeting could have been sig shirt from bunker branding. Also note I have a uh weekly podcast called global warning.

[00:13:58]You can find it on ry mcbth.substack.com as well as 4 days after release on YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes. Thank you so much for watching.

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