In retaliation to President Trump’s tariffs, Brazil has threatened to impose its own tariffs of 50% on US goods, which could impact the petcoke market. Petroleum coke is a raw material used to make anodes in the aluminium smelting process. Brazil is a good source of low-sulphur petcoke via its company Petrobras, while Petrocoque is a supplier of calcined coke. If the tariffs go ahead, although Brazil is a buyer of US petcoke they can source this from elsewhere. However, the US industry will find it harder to replace its sales to Brazil.

On the other hand, both the Alumar and Albras smelters in Brazil use American calcinated petroleum coke (CPC) in significant volumes; Petrocoque’s output would not be enough to replace American CPC. Additionally, one focus is the amount of CPC imports into the US that are used as a blend stock, but this volume is not critical.

American suppliers may drop their prices in order to move volumes, but this could have a domino effect on cokes that are sold as fuel but used as a blend stock in calcining.