Drive to secure natural resources behind some of the boldest policy decisions over the past century...

As the United States races to reduce its reliance on China for minerals vital for national, economic, and energy security, tariffs with Canada may drastically undermine these efforts. Canada is the biggest source of the United States mineral imports, providing key sources of uranium, aluminum, nickel, steel copper, and niobium. To put it into perspective, in 2023, Canada accounted for $47 billion of United States mineral imports. China followed with $28.3 billion. The consequences of tariffs would be particularly profound for the defense industry, nuclear energy, and heavy manufacturing. A 25 percent tariff on Canadian mineral imports could cost U.S. off-takers an additional $11.75 billion—a figure that would increase as base metal and uranium prices recover....

More active US engagement on critical minerals projects globally is to be welcomed...

On Tuesday, December 3, China announced stringent export restrictions on “dual-use” technologies for both civilian and military use, specifically targeted at the United States. These restrictions double down on previously announced controls on these metals, going so far as to ban shipments of antimony, gallium, and germanium to the United States. The new restrictions marked several firsts in the trade war—the first time Chinese critical minerals export restrictions were targeted at the United States rather than all countries and the first time restrictions on critical minerals were a direct response to restrictions on advanced technologies. Critical mineral security is now intrinsically linked to the escalating tech trade war....

Miners, especially of PGMs, would do themselves a favour by finding new trading partners...

Cost of tariffs passed on to end users can be a chokehold on industries that are labour intensive...

Building minerals security is one of the most bipartisan goals in Washington. The United States first opened its Bureau of Mines in 1910 to coordinate minerals security needs. It was closed in 1996. In many ways, the U.S. government rapidly decelerated its efforts over the subsequent two decades. However, over the last seven years, the United States realized its reliance on China for critical minerals posed serious risks to its national and energy security alongside its economic competitiveness and prosperity....

Copper is vital to U.S. national, economic, and energy security. Everything—from clean energy technologies, electronics, and automotives, to power transmission infrastructure, data centers, and defense systems—depends on copper.  ...

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 introduced a host of new tax credits, grants, and other incentive programs designed to boost domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies and their components. The Section 45X Advanced Manufacturing Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a key initiative that targets not only the downstream production of technologies like electric vehicle (EV) batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines, but also boosting the upstream critical minerals industry by providing credit to offset high, and sometimes prohibitive, production costs....

When the world signed the Paris Agreement in 2016 the outlook for critical minerals was rosy. It marked global consensus of the importance of net zero ambitions....

Key metal is in high demand, and major producer Russia is likely to remain a pariah...

Addressing Critical Mineral Supply Chain Risks in Semiconductor Production...

With less than 35 days until the US election, if I had five bucks for every time someone in the world asked me what’s going to happen I probably wouldn’t need to work again....

Over the last four years, the Biden administration has rolled out a series of legislation to reduce its reliance on China for various supply chains. This includes the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Investment Infrastructure and Jobs Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. The administration has also rolled out two avenues for international partnerships to advance its minerals security interests. The first is a multilateral forum, the Minerals Security Partnership, which includes European countries and high-income East Asian countries as well as Australia, Canada, and India. The second method is through the IRA, which gives countries that the United States has a free trade or critical minerals agreement with access to electric vehicle tax credits....

As African leaders convene in Beijing for the China-Africa co-operation summit, a word of caution: the state of the Chinese economy is precarious. Focusing on building up one source of foreign direct investment and one buyer of African natural resources exposes countries to significant risk....