This is intended as a criticism:
As for Britain, Rishi Sunak will arrive at the G20 a puzzling figure: the prime minister of a nation without an industrial policy in a global industrial policy race, with no diplomatic focus on minerals when the rest of those assembled are competing ferociously over this.
This is all this “critical minerals” stuff. Essentially, lithium, cobalt and rare earths. Lithium is half the price it was a year back. Given that we know of - and that’s just us knowing of - some 200 prospective lithium miners out there we expect that price to fall again. Rare earths, again, prices are half what they were a year ago. We know of a round dozen (that’s not around, that a round) finds of ionic clays reported to the Australian stock exchange in the last 6 months alone. Three years ago we didn’t even know that ionic clays existed outside China. We expect that price to decline further as well. Finally, the cobalt price is around, or a little under, the production price. That’s not a signal that something’s in short supply.
As we’ve said before, sure we need a system to change, increase, the supply of minerals when demand changes. We’ve got one - free market capitalism. Varied corners of the world’s stock markets are simply packed with exploration miners, even people bringing projects to fruition. We’ve simply no need of anything else.
We would even go so far as to insist on the following. This is not investment advice, of course it isn’t, but we are putting it out there as a general prediction. The prices of lithium and rare earths will be, within the decade, back where they were three and five years ago. Absent any significant scarcity value and around and about what makes normal - not excessive - profits for the miners. It also requires no further intervention for this to happen - capitalist greed will achieve this all on its lonesome.
The British policy of doing nothing therefore seems eminently sensible to us. So, why this insistence in the Sunday Times that there must be a plan?
Working on a think tank report for the Atlantic Council on the new green geopolitics over the past year, I’ve seen expectations move wildly.
Well, yes, we see and appreciate the problem. There’s not a year’s work in “S’all solved already” is there?