Suits and Boots | The Sustainable Business Podcast

Critical Minerals at the Crossroads of Geopolitics

• TDi Sustainability • Season 1 • Episode 22

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This episode explores how geopolitics is reshaping the landscape for critical minerals and the mining sector. The discussion highlights how export controls, tariffs, and investment policies are redefining access to key resources such as copper, lithium, and rare earths—and why these minerals are now viewed as strategic assets. 

The speakers examine differing approaches in the United States and European Union, the role of partnerships and offtake agreements in building secure supply chains, and how ESG, transparency, and standards are becoming central to responsible production and long-term resilience.

Speakers include:

  • The Hon Geoffrey Pyatt  | Former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Energy Resources, U.S. Government

    Senior Managing Director, Energy and Critical Minerals Practice, McLarty Associates
  • Isabelle Dupraz | Deputy Director, European Institute for Energy Security
  • Abigail Hunter | Executive Director, SAFE Center for Critical Minerals Strategy
  • Assheton Stewart Carter | Executive Chair & Founder, TDi Sustainability

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced in advance of the 2025 Resourcing Tomorrow event that will take place in London between 2-4 December. Find out more about the event>

Assheton Carter:

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI Sustainability podcast series, in conjunction with Resourcing Tomorrow. In this series, speakers at this year's Resourcing Tomorrow event discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the conference. I'm Ashton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI Sustainability, and your host for today. Geopolitical shifts are reshaping how the world views and manages critical minerals. Once treated as common commodities, useful in the products we use, but not really discussed in international political fora, where bilateral agreements and matters of state defense are on the table, resources such as lithium, copper, and rare earth elements are now seen as strategic assets, central to both energy security and industrial competitiveness. In this episode, our speakers examine how export controls, tariffs, and new policy frameworks, from United States Investment and Defense Tools to the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act, are redefining global supply chains. They discuss the importance of trusted partnerships, diversified supply, and transparent standards to reduce dependence on single suppliers, while exploring how ESG criteria, traceability, and responsible production are becoming essential to long-term resilience and shared prosperity across the sector. To join me in this conversation today, I am delighted to be joined by the Honourable Geoffrey Pyatt. Ambassador Pyatt has had a distinguished career so far of more than 35 years in the US Foreign Service. Most recently, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Energy Resources in the US government. In this role, he led the G7 Plus effort to mobilize international support for Ukraine's energy resilience. And as America's chief energy diplomat, he advanced energy partnerships with key allies and partners around the world, directing US diplomatic efforts to diversify supply chains for critical minerals to power the energy transition. He is now senior managing director of McLarty Associates, Energy and Critical Minerals Practice, where he leads the company's Europe, Eurasia, and South Asia practices. I'm joined too by Isabelle Dupraz, who is the Deputy Director of the European Initiative for Energy Security, an initiative launched in December 2023 in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Isabelle has worked in the public policy sphere for almost a decade now in research and public-private sector advisory capacities, spanning all levels of government in the UK and US. Her expertise spans European energy policy, global freight transportation, and master planning. And finally, I'm joined too by Abigail Hunter, who is at the USA ThinkTech Safe, an acronym for securing Americans' future energy, where she is the Executive Director of the Center for Critical Minerals Strategy. Here she leads all aspects of the Center's work, overseeing strategic direction and government briefing memos, as well as the Center's unique partnership with the US Department of State on the Minerals Investment Network. She's a recognized authority on critical minerals, policy and geopolitics, and she is a frequent speaker at industry and policy conferences and provides expert testimony to Congress. Before joining SAFE, she headed Federal Government Affairs for Quebec as a senior attache in Washington, DC, where much of her work focuses on North American energy integration. It's a pleasure to have such three distinguished critical mineral diplomats. I think that's the way we can describe their current fields, on the podcast. So welcome, Ambassador Pyatt, Isabelle and Abigail.

Isabelle Dupraz:

Thank you, Ashton.

Assheton Carter:

So I'd like to start. We normally start these podcasts with bringing the listeners up to speed and framing the topic for today, which is the geopolitics of critical minerals. And perhaps giving a bit of a historical perspective. And if I may, Ambassador Pyatt, turn to you as the longest serving of the three diplomats on the podcast today, to give a little bit of your perspective here. And, you know, what we really want to find out, I think, over the last year, what have been some of the most consequential events to get us to where we are today? So I guess there's two parts to that question. What are these events and where are we today? And it seems, I mean, over the last year there have been so many things that have happened, and so many potentially so consequential, especially from the point of view of the US administration and the deals that have been struck in Ukraine and the DRC, most recently in Australia. President Trump is heading towards Japan. He's just done a deal with Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia. So there are very many things happening, but which ones, from your point of view, really matter? What should we be focusing on? How can we explain where we've got to today?

Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt:

Sure. Well, it's a it's a terrific question to start out with. And as you say, things have been moving so fast in recent months, it's sometimes difficult to keep it in perspective. I would I would flag two really historic strategic developments. The first came last year, and that was the beginning of China's efforts to weaponize its overwhelming market dominance in certain key critical minerals technologies. Um the first three, in the Biden administration, we came to call them the three Gs, the export controls on gallium, germanium, and graphite. And as you might imagine, Ashton, there were a lot of principles in the administration when these controls came out. The first question they asked was, well, what do we use gallium and germanium for? And it turns out that these are niche materials that are strategically important, which are used in key defense and technology applications. And then, of course, there's graphite, which is ubiquitous uh in the energy storage industry. So, first we had those controls, and then just at the end of last year, at the very end of the Biden administration, you had the additional controls that China placed on certain rare earths and the rare earth magnetics. That was a further wake-up call, and I think really took these issues that were thought about traditionally as commodity questions, trade issues, and turned them into national security issues. Um, of course, that effort by China to exercise its market leverage has only accelerated in recent weeks, and we can talk more about that later on. But I would I would flag China's move into this area as a really tectonic change in the marketplace, and a marketplace that historically had viewed China's products as so cheap and so easily available that it made no sense to invest in alternative supply chains. And as a result, we all got ourselves in a collective situation where we were almost completely dependent on Chinese extraction and Chinese processing of certain products. The other strategic development, of course, is the election of Donald Trump, which has changed everything in Washington. We can talk about that more later on as well. But I would just note that in the Biden administration, there was a lot of attention among a small circle of people to the strategic implications of China's market dominance, to the importance of building international partnerships to diversify these supply chains. The Trump administration put that effort on steroids starting last April with the executive order on critical minerals and derivative products, but continuing almost every week some new development, a 232 process, a new tariff, a new investment, the huge sums of capital being invested by the Pentagon, the Office of Strategic Capital, new initiatives by the Development Finance Corporation. And I think Abigail will share my view. I don't think there's a week that goes by in Washington, D.C. today when there's not a big think tank or strategic roundtable or congressional hearing focused on critical minerals issues. And that's something new for all of us.

Assheton Carter:

Great. It feels more like a daily publication of things coming out of DC. That's for sure. And Isabelle, we've heard there then that there's this approach from the administration both on um restrictions and tariffs, but also on promotion internally within the US to invest into the critical minerals value chain. What has been the approach from the EU? It's certainly less vocal and less muscular, but there's also been deals struck, I think, in Malawi, South Africa, in Zambia, talks about Ukraine as well, when that eventually comes to an end. What has been the approach there?

Isabelle Dupraz:

Thanks for the question, Ashton. Um, you know, I think Europe has been a lot slower at waking up to the fact that, you know, we can't continue to rely on adversaries and strategic competitors for critical supply chains. Our dependence on Russia for gas has left Europe in this period of uh economic stagnation that has repercussions really across the whole uh continent. And so as we look at critical minerals, um, you know, governments have recognized that substantial intervention is needed to redress these fundamental imbalance characterized by non-market dynamics, predatory pricing, overproduction, and deliberate actions, including misinformation campaigns in Europe, to undermine our efforts to build ex-China supply chains. And so the CRMA, so the Critical Raw Materials Act, which entered into force in May 2024, is really the backbone of the EU's response to this challenge. And what it does is it sets floors and ceilings for European production and single suppliers. So to look at extraction, um, it sets a floor of uh 10% of EU extraction for its annual consumption, a 40% floor in processing for its annual consumption, and then a 25% floor of recycling for its annual consumption by 2030. It also states that no single country should provide over 65% of the EU's annual consumption. So if you look at where we're at currently and the current state of play, this is, you know, this represents really substantial ambition when you have dependencies of 95% and 98% for certain minerals on a single supplier.

Assheton Carter:

Great. Thanks so much, Isabelle. And um, Abigail at SAFE, a lot of what SAFE does, I understand, is look at the research, look at the data and the numbers, and see how some of these geopolitical events might have changed the business landscape. Could you also give us a little bit of a perspective historical on where we are today and how we got here?

Abigail Hunter:

For sure. And thank you again for having me. This has been uh a long time coming in terms of dynamism across critical minerals supply chains. Historically, people tend to look back to 2010 when China cut off Japan from rare earths uh, specifically following an incident in the Sinkaku Islands. And that prompted WTO action in some coordination by the then Obama administration out of the United States with allies. But the Trump administration, again, I'll speak from maybe a little bit of a Washington perspective, just because of where I sit. The Trump administration came in and saw, you know, multilateral coordination to combat a challenge and ultimately wanted to do more direct support. So the beginnings of what we see in the Trump 47 administration began to take shape with the first use of the Defense Production Act for rare earth projects, the MP project happened back then. And then the Biden administration came in with very, very big focus on clean energy, combating climate change, and realized the tethering of those areas to critical mineral supply chains, not wanting to become befallen to an adversary. They introduced different policies that limited those supply chain restrictions, coordinated diplomatically in efforts that Ambassador Pyatt led at that time that SAFE supported, and then really tried to make sure that the supply chains we were standing up were free of adversarial control or influence in our incentives and tax regimes and also elevating tariffs. The Trump administration, like Ambassador Pyatt said, very much dialed this up, especially on the tariff front. And so definitely something that people are anxiously awaiting is that investigation into processed critical minerals and their derivative products. It's worth punctuating Ambassador Pyatt's point there. My message, though, and taking kind of a step back from all of this, you know, Isabelle, Ambassador Pyatt, and myself, we spend a lot of time looking very close at these actions. And it can feel like there are policy swings. But if you take that step back, you'll see that there's a very clear trend of escalation of concern from governments when it comes to where we're sourcing these materials and how they're processed and what their end uses are. And ultimately we're seeing more actions to create more secure supply, not less. So whether that's regulatory restrictions or incentives, Isabelle did a great job outlining the EU's approach, it's not going away. And so the private sector needs to be able to reach out to the hand. Governments are outreaching to figure out where we're going to source these things effectively, because otherwise we're going to have an incredible amount of new supply online, saturating an already saturated market without people buying those materials or making sure they're the quality spec that we need for our advanced manufacturing-based economies today.

Assheton Carter:

That's a very interesting last point. And I think what all three of you have pointed out, um very clear message here really is, and um potentially the election of President Trump has thrown us into sharper relief. But as you said, this has always been around, but all governments now are concerned about the stability of their supply and where critical minerals come from and the actions that they're taking are both on the tariff front and also the investing into domestic economies. But I guess the question, Abigail, if I could ask you again on this, is which ones are actually effective? I was reading a report the other day that even in an optimistic scenario, by 2035, the only minerals which would be self-reliant or on which US would be self-reliant on and are actually produced and processed in the US would be molybdenum and zinc. So it's still going to have to look overseas. So are these approaches going to be successful? Are they going to achieve what they have set out to achieve?

Abigail Hunter:

Well, I don't think self-sufficiency is the goal, or if it is in certain circles of governments, it shouldn't be because there are limits to what we have in our subsoil. Geology is very stubborn and it does not know or adhere to the geopolitical tensions that we're contending with, right? So I think we can see really effectively in the administration's partnership with Australia the acknowledgement of the limits of our own geological reach and what we can do, as you noted, in the here and now. All of these projects take time. And so the policies need to be adjusted to reflect kind of the step-by-step work that we need to do to make sure that we bring alternative supply online. So you have the incredible investment into MP materials that covers a range of different policy tools to make sure you're insulating that project and getting to the magnet production and the 10-year time horizon without any disruption. But what MP needs to still do is secure heavy rare earths that they have some of in their project in California, but not sufficient enough quantities for some of the specifications of the magnets they hope to produce for the OEMs and also for the defense sector. So, where are you going to get that? You need to look to friends and allies and whether they're already producing. My favorite part of the US-Australia deal is the Alcoa Gallium project that triangulates with Japan as well. Japan saw the scarcity of gallium coming down the pipe for their industry. And because they refine some of that gallium and sell it to the United States for our semiconductor industry, they were able to raise the flag and implicate the DOW in that deal. So Alcoa Australia had the expertise, the resources sitting in their waste piles from their aluminum refining. Japan had the foresight, they had the ability to connect to the private sector, they have the refining prowess. And the United States had some of the capital that was needed, as well as the offtake, which ends up being quite key. And so to kind of close out your question, I think it's really a good deal or getting at this problem, cracking the nut sooner rather than later, requires all of those diverse stakeholders to come together quickly, share the risk, win together, lose together so that we can ultimately get secure access to supply in a much shorter time horizon. There'll be some growing pain, certainly, but I think we're we're doing a better job these days.

Assheton Carter:

Thanks, Abigail. And Ambassador Pyatt, that point of view from Abigail that we've just heard, I think is interesting to reflect on as we move towards the upcoming meeting between President Trump and President Xi. I think it's on October the 30th. And you mentioned that the election of President Trump was one of the significant things that we need to look at. A lot of what I think Abigail has said relies on a sense of trust between different countries as they move to figure out how to secure these supply chains. Some would say that the actions of the Trump administration has left that has left that trust shakier than it has been before. So how do you think we're going to be able to navigate this diplomatic path ahead and secure these partnerships that Abigail was referencing in an era of potential I'm not sure if I was going as far as say mistrust, but certainly less trusting than it has been previously?

Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt:

I think in terms of how we go forward, as Abigail said, um geography and geology are immutable constructs. But I would also argue that multilateralism is not just a fetish of one political party. It's also one of America's greatest strengths, our ability to build coalitions, especially in an era which is focused on great power competition and in particular the fundamental global challenge of the rise of China and China's alternative perspective on how the international system ought to be organized. So, from that perspective, I am encouraged that as the Trump administration has continued on, you have seen a gradual consolidation of increasing focus on building international partnerships. So again, this the Sojit's Alcoa deal is a trilateral arrangement. It only works when the three governments are working together: Japan, Australia, and the United States. Likewise, in the transatlantic context, all of the work that we are doing with the European Union on European energy security, helping to reduce dependence on Russia. And I will note in this regard, um I will always I will always bear in mind the memory of former Energy Commissioner Simpson in one of our bilateral negotiations during the Biden administration, making the observation that Europe must not trade an era of dependence on Russian fossil energy for an era of dependence on Chinese critical minerals. And Isabel alluded to this, but I think one of the things that we made tremendous progress on during the Biden administration was narrowing the differences between Washington and Brussels and building a shared understanding. Not only that we needed to avoid this dependency on China, but also that we needed to ensure that our companies were working together to deliver the increased volume of these energy minerals that we need to meet our energy transition and national security goals, and to do so in a way that doesn't deepen China's market dominance.

Assheton Carter:

Great. That's uh a somewhat encouraging, I feel, point of view when it comes to multilateralism and the partnerships between countries. So thank you for that. And perhaps, Isabel, the um the differences between the Trump administration and what the EU is trying to do are less. There may be more similarities than there are differences, is what I heard, but the the pace um at which the two blocks are going is is different somewhat. But Isabelle, I thought I'd ask you a question a little bit about the tools that the EU has its disposal to better understand where the vulnerabilities lie in the supply chain. I was reminded recently that I reviewed the uh critical minerals methodology that the EU uses, and that's quite a backward-looking methodology, not a critique on my part, that's actually the limitations in the methodology itself. How about the looking forward this scenarios? What does the EU use to better understand where its vulnerabilities rely?

Isabelle Dupraz:

Um, so I mean, just to pick up on your your earlier point about you know the Trump administration's uh approach to doing deals versus uh Europe. I mean, I think there's there's a very big gap uh between the two. I think vis-a-vis working with um minerals-rich countries, the EU um has mostly been leveraging these memoranda of understanding, uh, which we've seen are somewhat lacking in their ability to actually bring private investors to the table and yeah, their their ability to to be um exclusive, basically. Um so we've seen that in in the case of Ukraine. And I think these need to be strengthened by recognizing that Europe needs to play to its strengths, its regional strengths. So uh to to name, to give the example of Germany, for instance, um, you know, Germany is very uh has a very robust machinery uh manufacturing industry that that can play that have have and continue to play a role in in minerals-rich countries. Um the exit of the UK from the EU has meant that you know the EU has been less connected to its to well, to Europe's financial center. And you know, banks, uh, banks in in France that are more uh used to uh investing in these sectors need to be need to be better better engaged and brought on board into these deals. And and we've also heard from industry that investment protections are very much a lot lacking from uh from this this MOU model. Um but to look to come to your question and to look at I's um and the work that we're doing, you know, we founded the organization because we we found that across our uh industry, policymakers, and military, we were uh struggling to take action because of a fundamental misalignment on what constitutes uh risk. Um and so we have developed a what we call a risk-based framework in order to align and break down basically the silos uh which we've created between our militaries, uh our regulators, and our industry. And of course, what we've found is that in in evaluating emerging security risks, um, material supply chain disruptions present the highest long-term risk in terms of enduring impact on the economy.

Assheton Carter:

So that's an important point about um risk, Abigail, and maybe changing directions a little bit. Uh one of the risks that you often hear about is the ESG, environmental, social governance, sustainability risk. How might onshoring or friendshoring strategies affect the different risk profiles of the minerals? I had um the CEO of the International Copper Association on the podcast the other day, Juan Ignacio Diaz, and he was talking about the importance of not just um getting more copper online. We need another mine, a copper mine the size of Escondido in Chile for the next 10 years if we're going to meet demand, was his idea. Um, but we need to ensure that it is responsibly produced copper. Um, and that goes across for different critical minerals. So, in this new world, does ESG play a part in that risk profile? And how can countries address that?

Abigail Hunter:

So, SAFE's position has long been that we should partner with jurisdictions like Canada and Australia that already have robust, high standard environmental labor, community rights regulations. So they can mine in their own backyards and obtain the minerals they need, we need for our economies and our mutual security. And I think it's challenging because we don't necessarily reward good behavior in the current minerals regime. A good example is the comparison of nickel mining in Indonesia compared to Australia, that shows weak enforcement of environmental standards can give one country an advantage over another, despite having similar or even in some cases superior mineral reserves. So some miners in Indonesia produce nickel at lower cost by cheaply dumping and illegally dumping their tailings into the ocean, which pollutes marine life, destroys local ecosystems. Versus in Australia, mine tailings, um marine tailings disposal is banned and tailings are dealt with on land at a higher cost. Um, but ultimately, again, that higher cost isn't priced in. And you have about half the world's nickel coming from Indonesia, while Australia very recently in the last year and a half had to shutter Nickel West's operations due to oversupply from Indonesia for nickel. So I raise this point because we're all contemplating how we can do a better job sourcing for security. But again, we don't necessarily take into consideration where we're getting our minerals today because these supply chains are highly opaque. Uh, the Australia-US deal that we keep coming back to because it's so recent in the news really does focus on this, asking or acknowledging the need for standards differentiation when it comes to pricing. And the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan points to this in pillar one, trying to stand up a standards-based marketplace. It's not to say that countries all over the world are going to have the capacity to make sure that we're handling these materials in the way that our regulatory regimes require, but we need to work with them on capacitization. So the marketplace approach over a long time period can hopefully drive this. Certainly, there's this urgency for security of supply motivating Washington, Brussels, Canberra, Seoul, countries all over the world. But ultimately, we do have higher standards that we can leverage if we're doing it within. In our own backyards and again using our diplomatic networks through systems like Ergy, which was established in the first Trump administration, to make sure that countries are meeting us where we need them to be.

Assheton Carter:

Perfect. And Ambassador Pyatt, I'm wondering whether the ESG response production aspect of this value chain is something that comes up in diplomatic conversations. Certainly, with my work with Chinese companies, I find that it's not that they're opposed to meeting standards, it just they don't necessarily understand what they are, why they've been asked to do it, and how to go about putting those in place sometimes. So and much of what we do now is training programs with some of these Chinese companies so they can meet expectations. Is that your experience? And is this a diplomatic asset that can be used in forging partnerships?

Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt:

So a couple of thoughts. First of all, I think in terms of China's behavior, and you have to focus on actions, not words, China's behavior oftentimes has been to drive a race to the bottom in terms of labor standards, environmental standards, and price. And as my old boss, Secretary Blinken used to say all the time, we have to make a better offer. So, and in this regard, you know, Abigail is exactly right in terms of the importance of building coalitions of countries that are committed to holding up at least minimum positive standards in terms of environmental protection, uh, in terms of worker rights, in terms of safety. That should be a norm. And then this connects immediately to the issue of price. And I think that's one of the dilemmas that we face as we think about this new strategic landscape is how to navigate around the demands of the marketplace in terms of price. So you look at the Defense Production Act investment into MP materials that I mentioned earlier. A central component of that deal was a price floor and guaranteed offtake, looking to the future, the Alcoa Sojits deal that we talked about on gallium. Uh that project is designed to produce, if I'm remembering correctly, about 100 metric tons annually, which is more than enough to satisfy the entirety of the U.S. market. But it's going to be hard to sustain over the long term if China does what it has done, for instance, in the nickel sector, where it uses its pricing power, its predatory pricing ability to drive out competition. And this is an issue that the Trump administration hasn't solved yet, the Biden administration didn't solve it, and we're going to have to work with industry, with off-takers. And I understand the complexity because if we're talking about auto manufacturers, for instance, whether European or North American auto manufacturers, all of those are publicly traded companies. And their obligation to their shareholders and to the marketplace is to source the lowest possible price inputs that they can find in order to deliver the most affordable product possible to the marketplace. But we need to figure out how to price in a certain premium for better standards. Because if we don't, then we're just going to keep going to China. And you can look at the example of the Chinese nickel producers in Indonesia that Abigail talked about. And having discussed these issues with Indonesian political leaders, and we we did a U.S. Indonesia Critical Minerals Agreement late in the Biden administration. Indonesian political leaders, Indonesian politicians don't want to have poor standards on environmental practices or worker rights because they're accountable to their citizens. But we have to build, uh we have to build a stronger coalition. That's one of the reasons that when the Biden administration launched the Mineral Security Partnership, the first document on which we reached agreement were a set of standards that all of us committed to adhere to. And my own belief is that the Trump administration would be well served to dust those off and continue upholding those. Because to the extent the Trump administration is also strongly focused on providing and expanding mining and processing here in the United States. And I think every American should support those objectives. You're not going to be able to do so, whether it's for a nickel and copper mine in Minnesota or for a processing facility in Arkansas, if you don't meet high standards.

Assheton Carter:

Great. Thanks so much. One point you brought up there was about the premium, and just noting that the London Metal Exchange a couple of weeks ago announced, or maybe signaled, that they would be looking to how to have premium products that are traded on the Critical Minerals Exchange. One theme is coming up is around investment and downstream partnerships. And I wonder if I could ask Isabelle and Abigail about those in there from their points of view. And Abigail, in particular, what other different investment models or financing mechanisms, such as private-product partnerships, transition bonds, and strategic stockpiles, that you are advocating and use to stabilize the US critical minerals value chain?

Abigail Hunter:

Thanks, Ashton. So I think first it's important to start with the point that minerals projects can vary drastically in their risk profiles depending on the commodity, the jurisdiction they're operating in, the general market at the time of the evaluation of the project. This means that the financing mechanisms have to be designed with those different risks in mind. We can lump some groups of commodities together to get a little bit of clarity on the types of tools we can use. So you talked about kind of the purchasing of materials, collaborating with the downstream. Many countries right now are considering using their stockpiles as a potential buyer of last resort to support mineral project development. Just generally, long-term off-take agreements can create price stability for both buyers and producers by locking in a set price or range. That's really important because it smooths out some of the big swings that are considered risks in investing in this space. But it's also really key to not overdo it because investors like to see the upside potential when prices rise to keep investing in new supply. The government might be the right body to intervene here if the markets are really small, if they'll never meet the economies of scale, or if the end users just need trace amounts of minerals across a diffuse number of applications. So in these smaller, less developed markets, joint purchasing aided by governments, can help by combining demand and providing the scale needed to make these long-term deals work. But as we've seen in battery materials, or even with Apple, with Rare Earths, there could be some anchor buyers for whom the need to secure those minerals is so high that they actually opt to engage directly with miners and sometimes invest themselves in processing. More broadly and in more mature markets, market makers, or eventually, ideally, financial tools like futures or options become the better way to manage price swings and give everybody more certainty. And I just kind of address like one suite of pricing stability tools that we have in the financial space to deal with this, but there's also direct price supports and additional policies that people are exploring. We always say you have to move carefully here because the invisible hand really whips about for these commodities. And so it's important that governments are being mindful and the market signals that they're sending through these types of interventions because they can have quite the cascading effect.

Assheton Carter:

Great. Perfect. So, Isabel, we've heard from Abigail there some of the different instruments related to investment and um managing stockpiles of critical minerals. One thing I want to pick up you talked about in your opening remarks was about the EU's purposeful building of networks. Could you talk a little bit more about that now and what are the different investment modalities and how EU is trying to engage the downstream, the important downstream in the block?

Isabelle Dupraz:

Like I said, in in Europe, the network is a lot less is a lot smaller. Um I mean, the the the number of there are fewer players and the network itself is is less robust. You know, there are two basically major public financiers, which is the European Investment Bank and the EBRD, which we've already seen have co-invested in lithium projects and manganese projects in Europe. Um and these really should be should be seen as you know uh case studies for scaling this type of um of co-investment and and public-private partnership. You know, as far as the question of connecting to the downstream, there's a big debate about you know chicken and egg. And um and you know, when we look at lithium, for instance, the entire European market for lithium is basically the size of one you know uh mid-sized buyer in in China. Um and and and so of course, you know, Europe really needs to be focused on developing its uh an LFP uh strategy. Uh so manufacturing cathodes and anodes for its for its batteries uh in order to basically bookend, you know, the the the CRM supply chain. Um because you know, just focusing on on extraction um without without actually having the the the downstream and the midstream um industries is is really going to be problematic. And these are these are industries that Europe also needs to be uh re uh meeting meeting calls for for rearmament um and and for for dual use uh products.

Assheton Carter:

Great. Thanks, Isabelle. And uh Ambassador Pyrt, perhaps I could ask you to close us out and give us your view on what are the emerging geopolitical tensions that could further disrupt critical mineral supply chains, or perhaps more optimistically, what are the things that are going to be in place that we should be observing over the next few years?

Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt:

I remain absolutely convinced that the United States is going to be successful in working on these issues, only to the extent that we leverage our greatest strength, which is our ability to build partnerships and alliances around the world as the Biden administration did through the Mineral Security Partnership.

Assheton Carter:

Well, very sadly, our time is up, and I'm going to have to close the conversation there. But the good news is that we can continue the conversation and to hear our panelists today impart their wisdom. It remains just for me then to thank the Ambassador Pilate, Isabelle DuPraz, and Abigail Hunter for sharing their thoughts with us today. So there we have it. An interesting take on the current and future states of the geopolitics of critical minerals. More optimistic than I thought it would be on some points, but also some differences apparent between the approach of the USA and that of the EU. A discussion that will continue, I'm sure. And I look forward to that at the Resourcing Tomorrow event in London in December. Thank you once again to our speakers for joining us today. For our listeners, please check out the rest of this special series of Resourcing Tomorrow Podcasts on the TDI sustainability suits and boots podcast channel. I look forward to seeing you at the event in December, where you can hear more from today's speakers. I'm Ashton Stewart Carter. Thank you for listening.