5 Comments
Jun 26Liked by The Oregon Group

Many actions taking about of emotions tend to lead to unintended consequences and it appears that the West solution to it's various problems is the very remedies that got us in the situation in the first place. The reason why many of the national security issue surrounding natural resources & critical minerals/metals exists in the first place is because of Kyoto protocol. A climate policy that committed developed countries to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions but not developing economies. EPA regulations in the 70s & 80s assisted as well, but from the 90s upward to today heavy industry is oversea where they were not subjected to these restrictions and if this holds true, than when trade is included, find that all the happen was a musical chair of emission and pollution: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-embedded-in-global-trade?time=2021

Now The West wants to reverse engineer this when, if you look at the data, there is no possible way to do it. LNG, Netherland gas, & North Sea was always an option for Western Europe instead of relying on Russian natural gas, but they did not explore those options because it was cheaper to import from Russia. Now Europe pays a premium for friendly-mostly American-gas not because it wants to but because they do not have a choice. If the West wants energy, mineral & metal, security, than they should pursue a war like effort to roll out refining capacity combine with nuclear power plant to allow for the refining of the energy intense materials & metals. We don't have to mine of the materials per se. We can create national reverse, hedged, and supply agreements with friendly nations to offset supply risk, while allowing us to trade worthless pieces of papers for valuable resources to turn into higher value add products. Straight out of John D. Rockefeller play book-same one China is using.

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Jun 25Liked by The Oregon Group

There is already a premium for tin from European smelters within the EU. It's hard to find data on it but many consumers pay a premium for recycled, hence conflict-free tin. Heard this often in some personal discussions.

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author

Interesting. Yeah, it seems to be across the metal space, just very "unofficial", so very difficult to actually get a read on what the premium actually is.

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Jun 25Liked by The Oregon Group

Thanks for this article. Some great commentary and analysis. The challenges for western critical minerals producers are significant and investors are simply not supporting the development of new supply chains that are structurally higher cost, absent Government support or mandates. In my view, there is a market for sustainably produced critical minerals as a preferred supply source, but at the market price and unfortunately not at a premium price. The buyers of critical minerals have to compete globally as well, again absent Government mandate.

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author

Agreed, and also, one thing we didn't touch on in the analysis, is that China, Indonesia, etc will also start to try and clean up their act - and, *if* they do, it will still mostly likely with a discount compared to the West.

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