Critical Minerals

The Cristo Redentor and San Francisco crossings remained closed on Monday. Trucks, mining shifts and mountain communities now carry the cost of a winter storm measured in waiting time.

The G7’s Évian texts did not create a new institution. They made club access to strategic flows sound administratively normal: ships without tolls, minerals outside pure spot markets, and, by diplomatic reporting rather than communiqué text, advanced AI for trusted partners.

The US critical-minerals plan is less a market fix than a managed-pricing system for strategic commodities. The near-term shape is likely bilateral US deals, selective coordination and tariff tools, not a clean G7 institution.

Some materials are starting to price like oil tankers in a war zone — gallium, rare earths, a chip substrate — all spiking because one country controls the supply and can turn off the tap. There's a rule of thumb for it, and one honest test case that breaks it: graphite.