Recently there were a couple stories that came out simultaneously showing an increasing bias towards restricting flow of natural resources outside of regional use. The focus was on gold, copper, and rare earths. The news stories were many.
Some we noted were: the confiscation of Barrick gold in Mali and Russia essentially nationalizing its gold mining. The third noted an increasing proclivity for Bric Central banks to buy their own locally-mined gold without involving the LBMA.
These stories came out after Trump announced a couple things of his own in the same vein but not the same commodity. The first was the copper tariff soon to be levied at 50%. The second were the rare earth news items and announcements related to critical minerals: including the pentagon buying a 50% chunk of a rare earth company in the US.
These are all very significant developments. Behaviors like these are what nations do when they are at war with each other. If we were in a kinetic war, those would essentially be embargoes done before-hand. Every nation is stealthily embargoing every other nation’s access to their raw materials.
It’s been going on since Covid, after the realization that supply chains deemed to be global and stable were really much more fragile than they appeared.
The morning of the gold stories we did a voice note in this mineral war posturing.
Find the audio attached with a cleaned up transcription beneath. Thank you.
