Last year, we noted that our coverage of the report coincided with Groundhog Day, February 2^nd.  And just like in the Bill Murray classic movie, in which the clock jumps back to the same day all over again every morning, the Critical Mineral movie appeared to bring us back to a situation of ongoing deep dependency on foreign sourced metals and minerals every year – at least in recent memory.

This year, we’re once again back with a look at the report, and, lo and behold, it’s Groundhog Day all over again – and by the looks of it not only with regards to the date, but also in terms of what we’re seeing, especially on one of the most telling charts of the report – the depiction of U.S. Net Import Reliance, or “Blue Wall of Dependency” as we have dubbed it based on the many blue bars showing our significant degree of import dependence.

While there are some changes from last year’s report, the number of metals and minerals for which we are 100% import dependent stayed the same at 15.  The the number of metals and minerals for which we are 50% or more import-dependent has dropped slightly, after having gone up over the year before — with the new report pegging it at 49 versus 51 in 2023 and 47 in 2022.

When cross-referencing the U.S. Net Import Reliance chart with the 2022 Final list of Critical Minerals, the United States was 100% net import reliant for 12, and an additional 29 critical mineral commodities (including 14 Rare Earth lanthanides, which are listed under rare earths) had a net import reliance greater than 50% of apparent consumption — a small drop by two over last year’s report.

Once more, ARPN  can’t help but observe that the trendlines represent a stark contrast to U.S. import reliance for metals and minerals in 1984, when we were 100% import reliant for just 11 mineral commodities.

A few changes for individual metals and minerals included in the report are notable and significant, particularly in the context of the accelerating global green energy transition:

For the Rare Earths, a key group of tech metals underpinning 21st Century technology and the accelerating green energy transition, our import reliance had dropped from 100% in the 2021 report to “greater than 90%” in the 2022 report.  Last year’s report had, this number back up to “greater than 95%” and it remains at the same level in this year’s report, with rare earth concentrate being extracted in the U.S. currently sent to China for separation.  Once again, a single link lacking in a supply chain continues U.S. dependency.

For Lithium, perhaps the most frequently cited battery tech mineral, and Cobalt, another one of Lithium’s “battery critical” peers, U.S. import reliance stayed the same at “greater than 25%” for lithium, while Cobalt’s number dropped from 76% to 69%.

For Graphite and Manganese, both battery criticals – the USGS report shows both still pegged at an unchanged 100% import reliance, unchanged from last year.

For Nickel, the final battery critical and a new element on the 2022 Critical Mineral List, import-reliance saw a small jump from 56% last year to 57% in this year’s report, after a more significant jump the year before (from 48% to 56%).

Import reliance for Platinum represents one of the biggest changes over last year’s report, which had the metal pegged at 66%. That number increased to 84 percent in the 2024 report.

Another change worth mentioning is the upward trajectory for Copper import reliance. In the 2010s, import reliance for Copper hovered around 30 to 35 percent, but in recent years, that number has gone up.  This year’s report has it pegged at 46%, up from 41% in the 2023 report.  This development that may be of particular relevance as in 2024, the U.S. Government Critical Minerals List is up for another update, on the 3-year timetable codified in federal law, and in spite of the metal’s inarguable growing importance in the context of decarbonization efforts and expert warnings that there may not be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades, the material has to date been left off the whole-of-government list. Congressional efforts to change this may have not succeeded in 2023, but the Department of Energy designated the material a critical material as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment, further raising the material’s clout.

As in previous iterations of the report, China continues to be the elephant in the data room. And against all pledges in recent years for the United States to reduce import reliance on supplies from China, the 2023 Mineral Commodity Summaries lists China 24 times as one of the major import sources of metals and minerals for which our net import reliance is 50% or greater (which is down by one over last year) – and for all the talk about decoupling supply chains from China and against the backdrop of the escalating trade and tech wars between Beijing and Washington (see our coverage here), this continues to be a concern.

Like last year’s report, this year’s Mineral Commodity Summaries report features an expanded chapter on developments in the critical minerals realm, identifying trend lines, and supply chain security and U.S. government critical minerals initiatives as well as critical mineral investments.

Last year we noted that “while the urgency of the need to secure critical mineral supply chains has registered with stakeholders over the past few years, USGS’s findings underscore once more that supply chains in the 21st Century are extremely complex and meaningful change takes time – and the developments of 2022 ranging from increased resource nationalism in the Southern hemisphere over war in Ukraine to rising geopolitical tensions have not made untangling supply chains any easier.”

Since then, the stakes have only gotten higher as geopolitical tensions continue to rise and U.S.-Chinese relations appear to sour, but ARPN’s basic assessment of the situation stays the same.

So, with the report revealing more of the same, and in true Groundhog Day fashion, we revisit last year’s post, in which we stated:

“In Bill Murray’s movie, it took the protagonist several years to realize how to change behavior to break the cycle.  We know by now that to break our cycle of resource dependence, it will take a comprehensive ‘all of the above’ approach to critical mineral resource policy – and stakeholders have come to realize this and have increasingly embraced the concept.  We continue to stand by what ARPN’s Dan McGroarty stated during a congressional hearing in 2019 – ‘we can’t admire the problem anymore. We don’t have the luxury of time.’

If we act swiftly and comprehensively, there may just be a chance that we will wake up twelve months from now not to another Groundhog Day, but to a 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries that paints a picture of reduced resource dependence.”

2024’s report was not the one to paint that picture, but in light of recent policy developments (see our recap of 2023 here and refer to page 18 – 22 of the report), there is still hope we will be getting closer by the time next year’s Groundhog Day rolls around.  Meanwhile, with apologies to Punxsutawney Phil’s cheery forecast of an early spring, ARPN is projecting another long winter ahead of Critical Mineral foreign dependency.

The post Groundhog Day All Over Again in Spite of Rising Pressures? USGS Releases Annual Mineral Commodity Summaries Report appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

And while your Thanksgiving-focused brain may trick you into believing the infographic you see here represents the proportions of turkey to sides, Visual Capitalist has put together an important reminder for those working in the realm of mineral resource policy, and quite frankly, everyone else.

Using USGS data, the infographic (click here for a full-size look and the underlying data) visualizes the entirety of the 2.8 billion tonnes of metals mined in 2022 worldwide.

Comprising 93% of the global mined total, the metals mining landscape is clearly dominated by iron ore. In 2022, 2.6 billion tonnes of the material were mined, with 98% of the ore dedicated to steelmaking.

The second tier of the infographic comprises the industrial metals, which accounted for 185,111,835 tonnes of mined content in 2022, representing 6.5% of all metals mined last year.   Of these, aluminum accounted for nearly 40% of global production.

Meanwhile the transformative tech metals – as ARPN has called them — the Battery Criticals and Defense Criticals – only account for less than 1% of all the metals mined globally in 2022.

While this may come as a surprise to a layman – after all Critical Minerals are making frequent headlines these days largely fueled by the green energy transition and supply chain challenges exacerbated by geopolitical and trade issues – followers of ARPN well know what these key building blocks of 21stCentury technology “punch well above their weight” – both figuratively and literally.

They say visualization — essentially seeing with the mind’s eye or hearing with the mind’s ear – can be a powerful tool to reinforce concepts that can help you “understand complex information and make better decisions.”

Here’s hoping stakeholders seeing this infographic feel prompted to make “better decisions” to swiftly devise policies to incentivize these formerly minor metals and minerals that have such a major impact on the technologies transforming our world.

Recent developments show – see our most recent coverage of China cranking its critical mineral export control ratchet here and here – our adversaries won’t wait for our food coma and tryptophan to wear off as they escalate the Tech Wars.

The post Tech Metals, the Building Blocks of the 21st Century, “Punch Well Above Their Weight” – A Visual appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

ARPN outlined several of these DoD-funded projects to strengthen critical mineral supply chains in an earlier post. This past week, DoD added two more projects to the list.

On September 12, 2023, DoD announced that the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Industrial Base Policy, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, has entered an agreement with Albemarle Corporation to support the expansion of domestic mining and production of lithium.

Per DoD’s announcement, “[t]he $90 million agreement, entered into under Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authorities and utilizing funds appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act, will help support Albemarle’s planned re-opening of their Kings Mountain, N.C. lithium mine to increase domestic production of lithium for the nation’s battery supply chain. Albemarle estimates that Kings Mountain will be operational between 2025 and 2030.”

Sometimes hailed the “fuel of the green revolution,” lithium has been the posterchild of the “battery criticals.”  Start with the fact that the leading battery technology underpinning the shift towards net zero carbon emissions is called “lithium-ion.” With its high electrochemical potential and light weight, the commercialization of the lithium-ion battery has transformed and accelerated the renewables shift.  Lithium is a key component of the battery cathode, and the EV market and demand for renewable energy storage are key drivers for soaring lithium demand.

Meanwhile, as global lithium production has quadrupled since 2010, the U.S. share of production has dropped significantly. Once the largest producer of lithium in the 1990s, the United States’ share of production has dropped to 1 percent of the global total, as Australia, Chile and China dominate the field.

A second award announcement made on the same day aims at strengthening the nickel supply chain, and was also made through the Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office of the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience:

The $20.6 million agreement with Talon Nickel (USA), LLC – also entered into under DPA Title III authorities — uses funds appropriated by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act to advance nickel exploration and mineral resource definition of the Tamarack Intrusive Complex in northeast Minnesota.

The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Resilience, through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Prioritization (MCEIP) office, entered an agreement with Talon Nickel (USA), LLC (Talon) to increase the domestic production of nickel.

The $20.6 million agreement, entered into under Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III authorities and using funds appropriated by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act, to advance nickel exploration and mineral resource definition of the Tamarack Intrusive Complex (TIC). Here, the company seeks to leverage its Advanced Exploration System (AES) — a proprietary suite of geophysical mapping tools that has already completed a successful pilot program and allows the company to rapidly identify and demonstrate economically recoverable nickel materials.

A key battery critical, nickel is also an essential building block for the production of high-temperature aerospace alloys and stainless steel.  A “relatively benign supply profile” kept nickel off the U.S. Government’s first List of Critical Minerals in 2018. However, the metal’s increased usage in EV batteries, and the USGS’s expanded criticality criteria to include materials with only a single domestic producer along their raw materials supply chains – identified as having a single point of failure – led to nickel’s incorporation into the 2021 update to the U.S. Government Critical Minerals List.    The United States’ only primary nickel mine in operation, the Eagle Mine in Michigan, is nearing the end of its life cycle.

While, as ARPN previously outlined,  increased domestic production for critical minerals alone may not suffice to fully solve our nation’s critical mineral woes – hence ARPN’s support for an all-of-the-above approach to mineral resource security — there are promising domestic resource development projects that can go a long way to significantly reducing vulnerabilities in the short to medium term, and ARPN will continue tracking these DoD-funded projects as they begin to bear fruit.

The post DoD Once More Invokes Defense Production Act Title III Authority for Projects to Strengthen Domestic Critical Mineral Supply Chains for Lithium, Nickel appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Predicting that the global pursuit of net zero carbon emissions will require production of up to 6.5 billion tonnes of materials between 2022 and 2050, the study predicts looming supply gaps for four of what ARPN has dubbed the “battery criticals” — lithium, nickel, graphite and cobalt (but not the fifth battery critical manganese), as well as the rare earth material neodymium and copper, a mainstay metal that has featured prominently on various government’s critical minerals lists but has yet to be added to the overall U.S. government list (though DoE has just afforded the metal critical mineral status in its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment).

The authors of the study lament the lack of investment in exploration in the past decade and argue that “[i]n some key minerals — particularly lithium and copper – it will be challenging to scale up supply fast enough over the next decade to keep pace with rapidly rising demand.”

Stressing the need for drastic increases in capital investment in energy transition metals, the commission calls for a comprehensive “all-of-the-above” approach to mineral resource security, which harnesses the potential of recycling and improving technology and materials efficiency alongside more mining and prudently regulating environmental and social standards.

The report is released at a time when nations around the world are stepping up their efforts to secure the materials underpinning 21^st century and green energy technologies. While much progress has been made both via national and multilateral efforts – see our previous coverage here on the blog under the section header “recent posts” — more remains to be done.

See the report here.

The post New Report Predicts Supply Gaps for Four Battery Criticals Plus Neodymium and Copper, Calls for Significant Capital Investments Along Supply Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

However, one of the key components of 21^st century renewable energy technology, copper, often continues to fly under the radar — possibly because many of us take it for granted as a mainstay metal, and because the U.S. Government does not consider copper a Critical Mineral.

Followers of ARPN well know that copper is an irreplaceable component for EVs wind turbines, solar panels, the electric grid and other green applications. Its Gateway Metal status (see ARPNs gateway metal report here) coupled with the material needs in the renewables sector have led to projections that ““[t]he world will need the same amount of copper over the next 25 years that it has produced in the past 500 years if it is to meet global demand.”

A recent Wall Street Journal “News Explainer” video clip, accessible here, explores why copper is crucial to the global economy, and how its availability — or, more precisely, looming supply shortage — threatens the green tech transition.

Meanwhile, in spite of numerous pushes for copper’s addition to the United States government’s Critical Minerals List  – including ARPN’s Daniel McGroarty’s Public Comment responding to the Department of Interior’s draft Critical Mineral List — the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has thus far opted against affording the material “critical mineral” status.

Following the most recent USGS rejection, House Republicans from Western mining states set out to achieve “critical mineral” designation for copper via legislation.  As the WSJ explainer makes clear, the coming supply crunch puts an exclamation point on the case for copper as “critical.”

The post WSJ News Explainer: Looming Copper Shortage Threatens Green Tech Transition appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

However, as followers of ARPN well know, there is more to the story, and more than one battery technology, and, as Jessica Cummins outlines in a recent piece for Stockhead, demand for one of the lesser-known raw materials and one of the five minerals ARPN has designated as “battery criticals” – manganese – is on the rise.  Writes Cummins:

“An afterthought in global commodity markets for the last few decades, almost half of today’s lithium-ion batteries include manganese, and CPM’s projections have that figure jumping above 60% by 2030.

With its ability to increase energy density, equating to longer driving range in the case of electric vehicles, and the added benefit of combustibility reduction, manganese is fast emerging as a vital material to the future of the EV industry and automakers are cashing in.” 

In recent years, automakers increasingly expanded their battery material focus to include manganese, and while Volkswagen’s 2021 announcement of the company’s intention to incorporate high-manganese cathodes into its EV batteries was considered surprising, other automakers have since followed suit.

Cummins believes, however, that the ‘third wave’ of battery technology development, called lithium-manganese-iron-phosphate (LMFP) battery technology, might have the biggest impact going forward.

She points to recent research which has found that the incorporation of manganese into an upgraded version of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries (LFP), which represent the dominant battery chemistry in China, can double the range for a single charge from roughly 500km to up to 1,000km.  A Chinese supplier for Volkswagen says its LMFP technology has a life cycle of 4,000 charge-discharge cycles and over a lifetime can reach a range of up to 4 million km.

Element 25, owner and operator of Australia’s biggest onshore manganese resource, is building a battery plant in Louisiana and will be supplying Stellantis and General Motors. Cummins cites the company’s managing director Justin Brown, who says:

“What we’re seeing is the shift away from cobalt, which has meant that the proportion of nickel has been increasing, however nickel has become problematic because all significant nickel supply comes from laterite processing in Indonesia, which is energy intensive and an environmentally destructive process.”

Brown adds:

“Manganese is now the go-to metal and while the transition isn’t going to happen overnight, I’m told by the OEMs that the factories they are building now will be able to switch across to high manganese cathode materials without any significant re-tooling. It has become a really important part of their planning and over the next two years, when we get into production, I think you’re going to see a completely new landscape.”

With the importance of manganese growing – industry insiders already see LFMP batteries overtaking LFP in China – there is a looming supply shortage in the high-purity manganese market which is set to “really heat up” in 2028.

BloombergNEF expects demand from manganese from the battery segment to surge ninefold by 2030.  These developments have prompted a series of U.S. domestic efforts to secure manganese supply chains.

As ARPN outlined earlier this year, Nevada Silver Corporation, a U.S.-based mineral development company announced that its Minnesota-based subsidiary North Star Manganese received the required permits to commence drilling at its Emily Manganese Project.   Located in the Cayuga Iron Range of Central Minnesota, the Emily District “may contain the largest and highest-grade manganese deposits in the Northern Hemisphere” according to USGS. Drilling has begun and the company has already constructed a processing plant on site.

Further down the development path is the Arizona-based Hermosa Project, owned by major global manganese miner South32’s U.S. subsidiary, which the company calls its first “next generation mine” based on a design that uses automation and targets carbon-neutral mining operations in support of South32’s goal of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  Hermosa is “multi-Critical,” hosting not only manganese, but what may be the world’s largest zinc deposit, which is a key material in solar and wind power systems.

With demand for EV technology surging, and developments as the ones outlined by Cummins underway, the days when manganese flew under the radar are a thing of the past.

Expect to see and hear more about the material going forward, because, as Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Simon Moores phrased it last year, manganese represents an “EV supply chain bottleneck that can no longer be pushed into tomorrow by battery and automakers.”

The post Move Over, Lithium – Manganese Emerges as a Key Player in the EV Revolution appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The parades, barbecues, pool parties and fireworks to mark this year’s Independence Day are over.  There’s much to be thankful for, especially at a time when the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine, now in its second year, reverberates around the globe and geopolitical tensions continue to mount.

ARPN has always used the occasion of Independence Day to remind ourselves that “while we cherish the freedom we are blessed with in so many ways, we must not become complacent, as there are areas where we’re increasingly becoming less independent” — with our reliance on foreign mineral resources being a case in point.

Thankfully, stakeholders are increasingly aware of the urgency to strengthen critical mineral supply chains, and, on the heels of a global pandemic, ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, and growing resource nationalism, a flurry of activity has dominated the critical minerals space, ranging from domestic efforts over bilateral trade agreements to multilateral alliances.

For the U.S., a notable example of domestic efforts is the series of DPA Presidential Determinations involving specific Critical Minerals, beginning with President Trump’s July 2019 designation of the Rare Earth permanent magnet supply chain being designated as “essential for the national defense,” followed by President Biden’s designation of what ARPN calls the “Battery Criticals” as DPA Title III eligible in March 2022, followed by Platinum and Palladium in a DPA Presidential Determination in June 2022.  Earlier this spring, two further Presidential Determinations (February 27, 2023 Presidential Determination, and DPA Presidential Determination (2023-5)), effectively created an entirely new category of critical minerals – the “defense criticals” and designated airbreathing engines, advanced avionics navigation and guidance systems, and hypersonic systems and their “constituent materials” as priority DPA materials.

(for more on the Defense Criticals, read our post here.)

Followers of ARPN are further aware of policy initiatives like the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) or the European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which are currently being followed by bilateral trade agreements, as well as U.S.-EU discussions to launch a “critical mineral club.”

While the United States and our partners have taken several important steps to decouple critical mineral supply chains from China, Beijing, having systematically built out its dominance across the entire value chain from mining over processing to manufacturing, still has a chokehold on many key critical minerals, and particularly the EV battery supply chain.

And for all of the recent U.S. policy efforts, the latest USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report confirmed that our critical mineral dependencies still persist.

There is momentum to change this, however, as we have previously argued:

“Those familiar with the inner-workings of Washington, D.C. know all too well that particularly in an election year policy efforts can quickly lose steam or fizzle over attempts to placate certain constituencies. Against all affirmations to strengthen domestic supply chains, the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment is still strong.”

As followers of ARPN well know, the stakes are too high to let the momentum for comprehensive reform fizzle.

With a new “Great Game” afoot in the global mineral resource realm (see our most recent post on the issue here), the U.S. must double down on its push to secure critical mineral supply chains from “soup to nuts” to borrow a term used by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

With the West’s resource dependence running deep, and Beijing’s determination to continue its global quest for resource dominance unbroken, the critical mineral arms race will continue to heat up.   Stakeholders here and elsewhere must gear up for the long haul.

As ARPN stated in a previous post, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Neither was the United States of America.

But built it was, challenges were overcome — and we are celebrating the men and women who have fought for and continue to safeguard our freedoms this week.

Here’s hoping that one day we will be able to say the same for the critical mineral supply chains that anchor the technology economies of the 21st Century.

The post Independence Day 2023 — As We Celebrate Our Freedoms, (Resource) Dependency Still Looms Large appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

This week, the Indian Ministry of Mines released a comprehensive Critical Minerals List, consisting of 30 metals and minerals deemed critical for India’s ambition for cleaner technologies in electronics, telecommunications, transport and defense, according to the government.

The list comprises the group of 17 rare earth elements (REEs) and six platinum group metals (PGMs) as complexes. It also encompasses four of what ARPN has dubbed the “battery criticals” lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel (India’s list does not include manganese which rounds out the five battery criticals), as well as antimony, beryllium, bismuth, gallium, germanium, hafnium, indium, molybdenum, niobium, phosphorous, potash, rhenium, silicon, strontium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium, selenium, and cadmium.

Lastly, the list also includes copper, a mainstay metal and key component of the green energy transition which the United States has thus far failed to add to its own list of critical minerals in spite of numerous pushes for its addition.

According to Indian web news hub Rediff.com, the government plans to encourage public and private investment in exploration, mining and processing to secure the country’s critical mineral supply chains, and will seek to “facilitate the adoption of advanced technologies and international collaborations to enhance efficiency and environmental sustainability in the extraction and processing of critical minerals.”

One of the first such international collaborations was just made official during a state visit of India’s Prime Minister Narenda Modi to Washington, D.C. last week, where Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced the country’s joining of the Minerals Security Partnership alongside several bilateral and defense deals.

The MSP is a partnership between the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and several other countries convened in June 2022 as an initiative to bolster supply chains while aiming “to ensure that critical minerals are produced, processed, and recycled in a manner that supports countries in realizing the full economic development potential of their mineral resources.”

As the rest of the world aims to decouple its critical mineral supply chains from China, which has long dominated most of the critical minerals sector across all links of the supply chain, India is looking to harness its geopolitical wealth to become a “global hub for critical mineral production and reinforce its position as a major player in the global economy.”

In keeping with that objective, India’s recent moves have global implications.

At the beginning of this year, a New York Times piece called on G20 leaders gathering in Davos, Switzerland, to “pivot to the new reality provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the growth of extreme inequalities and aggressive Russian and Chinese autocracies.” 

In the critical mineral realm, these recent events served as a catalyst for a new “Great Game,” which the geopolitics of mineral resource supply had triggered and which gained momentum with the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015.

India’s recent critical mineral moves are highly relevant in the context of this new “Great Game,” particularly as relations between India and China are strained by an ongoing border conflict and growing regional rivalry, both of which are shaping South Asia’s security landscape and strategic environment.

With India having overtaken China as the world’s most populous country and set to become the third-largest economy in the coming years, India’s recent moves could be seen as a direct challenge by Beijing.

As Frédéric Grere and Manisha Reuter outline for the European Council on Foreign Relations, “New Delhi still exerts a dominant role in South Asia and, specifically, the Indian Ocean, but as China consolidates its position in the region, its attitude towards India has become more assertive. India remains resolute about preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia, repeatedly stressing that a multipolar world starts with a multipolar Asia, and seeking partnerships with a variety of countries, including the US and the EU. Beijing is concerned about India’s growing military ties with the US and tends to consider India’s intentions through the lens of its own rivalry with the US.”

The new Great Game may have just gotten Greater.

The post India Ups the Ante in New “Great Game,” Releases Critical Minerals List and Joins MSP appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

After Zimbabwe banned lithium ore exports last December in a move that only permits concentrates to be shipped out, Namibia has banned the export of unprocessed lithium and other critical minerals, according to Reuters.

The country is largely known as a source for uranium, but also has significant deposits of lithium and rare earth minerals.

With demand surging for the battery criticals — lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel and manganese — as well as other minerals underpinning the green energy transition like the rare earths, the Namibian government hopes to cash in on this development.

Under the plan approved by the Namibian government’s cabinet, only small quantities of the specified minerals —unprocessed crushed lithium ore, cobalt, manganese, graphite and rare earth minerals — would be allowed to leave the country, and their export would be subject to prior approval by the mines minister.

The Namibian announcement ties into a larger trend, which has been noticeable particularly in Latin America, a region with a historic penchant for nationalism, but has also reared its head in other parts of the globe.

ARPN has featured recent nationalist moves in Chile, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as in Myanmar, Indonesia, and China.

However, even in the Western world, government involvement in the critical minerals sector is on the rise. As ARPN previously outlined, “while modern Western democracies are typically hesitant to embrace more state intervention in the critical minerals sector, many believe that in order to succeed, the United States and its allies need to learn ‘how to stomach more state intervention [themselves].‘ “

As such Namibia’s announcement is hardly surprising, but it also serves as another reminder that as the U.S. and the rest of the West continue the quest to decouple from China, we will have to carefully balance domestic and global policy approaches — as well as public and private sector roles with economic and security concerns to reflect the geopolitical realities of our times.  This can be best achieved within the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach that focuses on domestic resource development where possible and leverages partnerships where needed.

The post Namibia Joins Resource Nationalism Trend as Demand for Battery Criticals Surges appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

Low tide and high tide, ups and downs, times of war, times of peace.  What holds true on a personal level, also applies to bigger fields like economics.

As value investor and author Howard Marks phrased it:

“Mechanical things can go in a straight line. Time moves ahead continuously. So can a machine when it’s adequately powered. But processes in fields like history and economics involve people, and when people are involved, the results are variable and cyclical.” 

Commodity markets are a case in point.   As Wells Fargo Head of Real Asset Strategy John LaForge phrased it in a recent white paper, “[c]ommodities typically move together like a big family, through long boom (bull markets) and bust (bear markets) cycles.”

After a “brutal decade for commodities in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis,” in the wake of which “investors had all but abandoned the asset class in favor of equities,”, as Rick Mills writes for Ahead Of The Heard,  it appears that we find ourselves at the beginning of what experts call a commodity supercycle (defined by Bank of Canada as an “extended period during which commodity prices are well above their long run trend”) – a phase predicted by analysts for several years.

Writes Bruno Venditti for Visual Capitalist:

“In recent years, commodity prices have reached a 50-year low relative to overall equity markets (S&P 500). Historically, lows in the ratio of commodities to equities have corresponded with the beginning of new commodity supercycles.”

Not surprisingly, Visual Capitalist has put together a handy chart and provides some useful context:

Wells Fargo’s LaForge believes that we have already entered a new commodity supercycle that started in 2020, and with these cycles typically lasting a decade or longer, we are merely in the “third inning.”

However, while, as Mills points out, “all supercycles have three indicators in common – a surge in supply, a surge in demand, and a surge in price” – this new commodity supercycle could “look a bit different from the previous ones for one simple reason – an increased focus on climate change.”

As JP Morgan writes, “climate change policies may lead to the largest peacetime redeployment of investment and capital,” with demand for critical minerals, especially the battery criticals lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt and manganese, as well as others underpinning the green energy shift like copper and the rare earths surging to unprecedented heights.

Analysts for metals retailer and commodities media organization KITCO believe that “while overall market conditions in critical metals remain volatile, the long-term fundamental drivers are strong.”

They add:

“Governments and corporations continue to ramp up large-scale investments in critical metals like lithium, uranium, copper and nickel, with the goal of onshoring the primary components of energy transition infrastructure and securing a resilient and sustainable supply chain. This considerable task — the reversal of the movement over the past three decades to increase globalization and offshoring to low-cost producers and supply sources — is in its early stages today. But despite its nascency, this powerful trend will have considerable consequences for commodities, capital markets and inflation.”

Bumps are to be expected, but the trajectory for now, is expected to be a longer upward trend.

How do U.S. and our allies’ mineral resource stakeholders in the United States fit into this supercycle?

Mills does not mince words:

“Here in the West, it isn’t only that we have failed to maintain mining and oil investments. We have also put roadblocks in the way of mining, such as the lengthy permitting process in North America. In Canada we’ve let interest groups hostile to corporations dictate resource policy.

We haven’t built the necessary infrastructure, either. (…)

All of these factors are limits to growth.”

He does see a silver lining, however, in the fact that “North Americans are finally starting to realize that to have security of supply, we need to develop our own mineral deposits.”

He concludes:

“The first step is recognizing that we have these metals, we do not need to purchase them from China, the DRC, Russia or any other foreign producer, we can mine and refine them right here.

Next is upping our exploration game — and nobody is better at it than Canadian junior resource companies — so that we can find and develop the deposits that will become the world’s next mines.”

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