USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

Say Lithium becomes essentially free because we find so much of it…would that drastically lower battery costs? Is our current supply of lithium limiting production?

The major limiting factor of lithium is not really availability so much as the cost of extraction. China is the leader in this field, not so much because of abundance or stellar technology, but out of a willingness to completely ignore environmental externalities (including those of the power generation involved in the whole process). As a result the price of Chinese lithium is low enough that it would be essentially impossible to compete with them unless a country had similar... "advantages"... or some new and impressive technology.

In the US environmental regulations, the cost of producing power, labor costs, would all drive up the price of the end product in a way that makes it totally noncompetitive. That's also why the US and some other countries are investing in other ways to find lithium (among other things) on seabeds, where it's hoped that extraction would be less expensive. Of course the threat to the seabed environment is a concern, which in turn might drive up prices by imposing regulation, etc etc etc.

> the price of Chinese lithium is low enough that it would be essentially impossible to compete with them...

In an export model, yes. However, given their negative externalities (including geo-political factors), importing countries may place tariffs on Chinese lithium in order to make use of other sources.

If the total embodied value of lithium in any particular product is small compared to the overall value of the product, the tariff might not represent a significant drag on the indigenous industry.

Congress plays whack-a-mole with policy while importers shuffle goods or various parts of the manufacturing process to neighboring countries or follow tighter packaging constraints to avoid specific tax rules or earn specific tax incentives. Tariffs are political showmanship. It's not really a viable nor an enforceable option in the modern economy, at least not based on my experience in the industry.