Donald Trump did not mince words on a tele-rally the night before Oklahoma's Republican runoff. "This country desperately needs aluminum," he told voters, pressing them to back Mike Mazzei for governor. Mazzei won, narrowly, taking 50.3% of the vote to Attorney General Gentner Drummond's 49.7%, in a race that had turned into an unlikely referendum on a single industrial project.
That project is a $4 billion aluminum smelter planned for Inola, a farming town east of Tulsa that calls itself the Hay Capital of the World. Century Aluminum Co (NASDAQ: CENX) and Emirates Global Aluminium, or EGA, want to build it as a joint venture, with EGA holding 60% and Century 40%. Once running, it would produce 750,000 tonnes of primary aluminum a year, more than doubling current US output and marking the country's first new primary smelter since 1980. Washington has already backed the plan with a $500 million Department of Energy grant.
#Why The Country Is Short On Aluminum
The urgency is not political theater. US primary aluminum production fell to 664,000 tonnes in 2025, according to the US Geological Survey, down slightly from the year before. Meanwhile, the country imported 3.01 million tonnes of crude aluminum metal and alloys, and Canada supplied 64% of it, about 1.94 million tonnes.
Only four smelters remain active on US soil, and domestic production covered just 18% of the 3.67 million tonnes of crude aluminum available in the US in 2025, leaving the remaining 82% to imports.
#A Campaign Fight Over A Factory
Mazzei had originally opposed the government incentives behind the project, but he reversed course the day Trump endorsed him in May. Drummond went the other way, filing a lawsuit from the attorney general's office to block the smelter and calling EGA's Emirati state backers a foreign monarchy. Ranchers near Inola worry that fluoride emissions could damage cattle and hay, and the city council has held off issuing permits pending further review.
For Century, the political drama coincides with a strong run in the business itself. Second quarter earnings came in at $2.46 a share, ahead of the $2.30 consensus. Shares trade in the mid $40s, well off their 52 week high near $70.
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#The Risk Investors Should Weigh
Trump's own trade policy complicates the case, and it just got messier. A 50% tariff on aluminum imports has helped make new US capacity look economically viable despite steep power costs. Washington and Ottawa spent August negotiating a deal that would have cut the tariff on Canadian metal to 25%, but the talks collapsed just before an August 21 deadline.
Trump responded with a fresh 50% tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods, Canada announced retaliatory tariffs of its own, and Prime Minister Mark Carney has described the standoff as open economic conflict. Construction at Inola has not started, and still depends on a finalized power agreement and a definitive joint venture deal. Mazzei's win clears one political obstacle.
Whether an aluminum tariff stuck at 50% and an escalating trade war end up helping Century's economics or destabilizing them is the question that will not be settled at the ballot box.