Episode #77: Critical Minerals, China’s Export Controls, and What US Manufacturers Must Do Next
In this episode of US Manufacturing Today (powered by Veryable), Matt Horine speaks with critical-minerals investor and Mineral War author Tomasz Nadrowski about how manufacturers are entering an era of conflict in which security of supply overtakes lowest-cost sourcing. They discuss China’s 60%–99% dominance across many critical minerals, how export controls and selective restrictions can weaponize a monopoly, and why rebuilding Western midstream processing is difficult after decades of decline in US smelting and refining capacity. Tomasz explains the “car crash vs. cancer” analogy for slow-moving supply-chain dependence, highlights a byproduct pricing failure using gallium in the aluminum/bauxite supply chain, and warns against assuming suspensions of controls mean “problem solved.” He urges manufacturers to diversify away from PRC inputs, treat procurement strategically, and adopt AI on the factory floor for productivity and flexibility.
Links
- Tomasz on LinkedIn
- Mineral War on Amazon
- Matt Horine on LinkedIn
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 Podcast Welcome
- 00:41 Critical Minerals Threat
- 01:07 Meet Tomasz
- 02:17 Conflict Changes Manufacturing
- 03:49 Ten Year Planning Window
- 05:33 Monopoly Versus Weapon
- 08:41 America Midstream Gap
- 11:21 Car Crash Versus Cancer
- 14:08 Scrolling Mineral Addiction
- 15:48 Byproduct Pricing Failure
- 18:34 Reprieve And January Deadline
- 22:04 Sourcing Map Playbook
- 24:02 Capex And Cold War Opportunity
- 26:31 Friendshoring In Americas
- 27:53 One Takeaway For Leaders
- 29:29 Book And Where To Follow
- 30:42 Final Wrap And Subscribe
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to U.S. Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing policy landscape, and more.
Right now, the phone in your pocket, the radar on a fighter jet, and the control systems on a plant floor all depend on a handful of elements most of us have never had to think about.
For several of them, one country controls somewhere between 60% and 99% of the supply. Last October, that country announced sweeping new export controls on rare earths, and a few [00:01:00] weeks later, after talks between Washington and Beijing, key pieces were suspended. Suspended, not canceled, and the suspensions expire this November.
My guest today has spent more than 25 years investing in mining and natural resources. He learned the business on the ground in South Africa, including a role at AngloGold in Johannesburg back when it was the largest gold producer in the world. He went on to work as a commodity strategist in London and as a portfolio manager in the Netherlands, and today he is a co-founder and portfolio manager at Amvest Terraden, where he invests in critical minerals supply chains outside of Chinese control.
He is also the author of Mineral War: China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction, a book that argues we have moved out of an era of competition and cooperation and into an era of conflict, and that most people have no idea how exposed they are. Today, we're going to talk about what that shift means for a manufacturer, how a monopoly turns into a weapon, why this dependency is so hard to see, a market failure hiding inside the supply chain, and what operators should be doing before that deadline arrives.
Tomasz, welcome to [00:02:00] US Manufacturing Today.
Tomasz: Thank you for this generous introduction. Great to be here
Matt: We are very excited to have you because I think this is a topic that kind of keeps surfacing in our conversations on the show. And so your level of insight is an exciting prospect for our listeners because it'll give some definition to it. And we'll just jump straight into it.
Your book argues we've shifted from, this operating system of competition and cooperation into maybe an era of conflict of some kind. What actually ch- what actually changes for a manufacturer the day that switch does flip even before anything on their floor looks different?
Tomasz: Quite a bit. So what does conflict actually means? It means that one party changes the rules of the game on an ongoing basis, and that affects the way we have to function. Unfortunately, the first rule of functioning in a conflict is security. So we have to provide security. Security of supply, for example, for certain inputs.
This is absolutely necessary. When that happens, the sort of purely pecuniary commercial rationale of sourcing something quickly and cheaply becomes almost a [00:03:00] second order event. And unfortunately, we are in this world in critical minerals. One issue I have of your very good introduction is that this is not just a handful of critical minerals.
Several handfuls of several hands which are full of those. Let me take just the car, right? When I learned how to drive a car, with about six or seven of these minerals. Today, it's over 30. And that complexification of various devices from telecommunication to defense, aerospace, and elsewhere and your white goods even at home all of this means that we are more rather than less dependent on those.
And unfortunately, as you mentioned, the party that dominates production of many of those especially midstream, is also the one that has decided that we are now in a conflict and has decided to leverage that dominance
Matt: Yeah, I think a good definition of conflict there is the leverage, right? That we've found ourselves exposed to. When we first met, I had mentioned something about a what this could look like as a potential 30-year time horizon. And you've narrowed that down a little bit more specifically.
A 10-year [00:04:00] strategic horizon makes more sense right now than 30. Is that more accurate than this kind of long view that I took out the gate?
Tomasz: Very difficult to adopt a long view these days. I have to look at the changes in artificial intelligence, right? Within several weeks things advance. There's this contemporary German philosopher, his name is Hartmut Rosa. He's Rosa. He spoke of soziale beschleunigung, the acceleration, the social acceleration, and that actually...
That concept came before the current stage of generative AI and what it actually does to our work, including the factory floor, potentially Cortese, Schneider Electric, and Siemens, if not any of the US companies at the moment. But it is accelerating really fast. So we have that on the one hand.
On the other hand, I'm coming from mining industry. In the mining industry, things cannot change overnight. And you wanna build a new mine, you just found something, let's say, fantastic copper deposit or nickel deposit. I'll see you in 16 years, because this is at that time that you will start producing, ramp up and producing commercially.
So between those two, we have to find a spot that is somewhat predictable. Still will depend on the different factors, [00:05:00] and especially how our adversaries and our partners function. But it's a lot easier to chart something out for about a decade, especially if you know more or less what's in the ground and what the capacity is to rebuild this, assuming that we know this, than 30 years.
I cannot possibly imagine how this world's gonna look in 30 years from now
Matt: No, it's, it's-- I think people talk in terms of that strategic outlook and the realization that the world is moving a lot faster not only than it used to, but also, we're getting back to first principles on a lot of the reindustrialization conversation. Mining is a great example.
It's not just an overnight startup. Really good point to make. Talking a little bit more about China their shares of some of these elements run from 60% to 99%, depending on the material. Where is the line between a normal geological monopoly like South Africa and platinum for 40 years and a weaponized one?
Tomasz: So I think these are two separate issues. Geology, unfortunately, is what it is. Thanks to the global trading system, we can obtain different supplies for different materials that are absolutely [00:06:00] necessary. That's true for energy, and that's true for non-energy, non-fuel materials as well. It's always been the case.
In fact, I claim that historically, long-distance trade developed first and foremost because of metals, because you have to create an alloy, because you have to create, for example, bronze, which is made of copper and tin, and it just happens that it's very unusual for copper and tin to co-occur in the same spot.
One is a sulfite, one is an oxide. And those, those parts of the world that actually had both, they developed an urban culture first, like Mohenjo-daro, for example, in, in Pakistan or some other places in Fertile Crescent. All the others had to actually instigate long-term, long-distance trade. That's the case of the Roman Empire, for example.
And so we are dependent on those exchanges because there is no country in the world that has everything. Not even Russia, the largest country by surface, has everything. And so your example of South Africa is a very good one because South Africa is and has been a quasi-monopoly in platinum. Okay, there are some byproducts from palladium production or nickel production in North America and in, in Russia, but by and large, South Africa has been a [00:07:00] monopoly, very important for ICE car making, of course, over, over decades.
N- the country never tried to use it as leverage. It's very different when you're a dominant producer, either on a global scale or as Russia was in the case of gas deliveries in Europe during the first two decades of the 20th century-- 21st century, until, of course, they decided to invade Ukraine. And they could fine-tune access, European access to this energy supply. Prices, volumes, different for Ukraine, different for Germany, different for other partners. That's unfortunately what's happening with weaponization. You'll... If you weaponize something, if you constrain either the access or you flood your opponent with material, underpriced material to prevent any incentives to reinvest in this space elsewhere that's, these are the cases of weaponization.
And China has fine-tuned this very well because their first attempt, which I explained in my book 16 years ago during the first conflict between China and Japan, was not very successful. Smugglers managed to take the material out, the material were oxides, magnets and [00:08:00] metal, which trickled back into the market, especially to Japan, which was their number one customer.
Today, it's much more difficult. Since the beginning of this year, China has an embargo on a lot of different critical minerals vis-à-vis Japan. That includes heavier herbs, that includes tungsten powder, that includes gallium, and it's a very tight ship that's it's being controlled. So they managed to, over those 16 years, to introduce a number of different restrictions that allows them to control the flows through the border and use it as leverage, in our case, in US, as a leverage in trade negotiations.
So pushing back against America's attempts to rebalance the very lopsided trade relation that we have with China
Matt: It's very lopsided also in the sense of scale on the processing capacity. And how f- how far behind is the US on, on rebuilding this type of processing capacity?
Tomasz: See, it's terrifying 'cause I usually deal with those smaller markets, critical market business with my fund focuses on, this is what I usually do. But if I zoom out and look in broader metal-making, this is an economy... When I was born, this is an economy that had about [00:09:00] 2.6% of our GDP in mining and metals. We are down to less than 30 basis point 30. This is how small it is. I'm talking about non-fuel, right? Extractive and metal-making. Just to give you an example, we have only four aluminum smelters left, only two full service copper smelters, one in Utah, one in Arizona, only one zinc smelter in Tennessee, hopefully reinvested soon by Koreans, and zero in terms of nickel.
There's no nickel smelter. There's no tungsten, primary tungsten smelter, just more advanced refiners. That's all. So it's really dramatic. We have lost this industry over a significant period of time. In my book, I fault not only just the designs of the Chinese Communist Party in China, but also the regulatory overreach here, and also sort of capitulation of the global US capital market which was unwilling to back this industry.
That actually is also true for steel, especially the blast furnace steel. And so it's a broader picture of the industrialization. And China, partly because of the way its modern industry developed in the late [00:10:00] '80s and the 1990s through s- special economic zones could collocate different operations together, so metal making say steel making or chemical industry all together.
It reduces the cost considerably if you have a lot of byproducts or waste material, and you don't need extra permits to transport this over large distances. It's a huge advantage. It's v- gonna be very difficult for America and the West to redevelop that midstream capacity. I have to give credit, however, to the government here in Washington, to some extent also in, in Europe, that the focus is currently on midstream mostly.
So a lot of the taxpayers' money that you see goes into developing the market in the middle. What I'm just a little concerned now after a year and a half of this activity is that very little has gone into the upstream, so reducing the cost of, say, studies, right? PFS, DFS studies in mining that would bring feedstock in future into that central node of, refining and smelting. Because the problem is not gonna go away. It's not going away, in five years from now. If you just build midstream, means you believe that somehow, we're back to [00:11:00] cooperation and competition in near future, and I don't see this happening anytime soon
Matt: Yeah, no, that's a really good point and, building out some capacity, but also that feedstock is a, it's for the long haul, right? We're doing a lot of the right things, but there I've heard a lot of that in a lot of the industrial space that we've invested in near-term capacity, but maybe the long haul is a lot longer than we think.
It's not a short-term thing. And I think you frame it really when you talk about it as, this invisible dependency that we have. And you came up with a great example. You compared, 1973 to today, as a car crash versus a cancer, and would love to get, more of your take on that comparison because it was it rang really true.
Tomasz: All right. So I have to give credit where the credit is due, and that comparison, that metaphor comes from Tom Marahood from Columbia University here, who works on energy and critical minerals. But I fully agree with this. So let's take our... us back to October '73, what happened back then, right?
So OPEC basically, almost overnight reduced the flows and then doubled the prices and then quadrupled the [00:12:00] prices of oil. And everybody could actually feel it at the pump, right? You have those black and white pictures of, Studebakers and Plymouths being parked in front of the gas stations.
That's the car crash metaphor. It's there's this term in psychology psychopsychia. So when you are about to crash, th- something happens with our amygdala and adrenaline and dopamine that's flooding so quickly, that our hormonal nervous system functions so quickly that we perceive the environment as moving much more slowly.
I'm sure you've heard it from people who had car crashes. There's this weird sort of evolving psychological phenomenon. With what we are now experiencing in rare earths and other critical minerals. First, because it affects B2B rather than B2C, so normal consumer wouldn't know how many of these are in his or her iPhone, right?
That's the first... or whatever other device they use. And secondly it's happening slowly. I mentioned China's turning the screws that really accelerated in 2020 when they introduced export control law, and then they had about 25 different [00:13:00] measures, different restrictions, fine-tuning the method, not just on the flows of material, but also technology, processing technology, equipment to process reagents, IP and so on.
Since September 15th, it's illegal for PhDs in China to just simply freely travel outside, right? They need to have a special application to leave the country. So it's a very tight level of control, and that's... I'm comparing it or Tom or myself now compare it to cancer because it's something that's evolving slowly.
You don't see it unless you do your own colonoscopy, and there is this interesting term in, in Chinese, which I really love. It's hui ji, which is like you're afraid to go to the doctor because you suspect that something's wrong, so you better, trying to avoid the bad news. And that's, unfortunately, for a long time, has been our problem in the West.
So this hui ji, this kind of let's not look under the hood because it could be really ugly. It is very ugly now. It is very ugly, and that's, the whole pageant and red carpet in DC illustrates precisely that
Matt: Yeah, it's a r- really good example [00:14:00] of y- yeah I like that phrase 'cause it kind of rings true and, a, all, a lot of us avoid going to the doctor, which is a whole nother podcast maybe for another subject and time. But just behaviors can cause cancers you've also compared our dependence on materials like indium, the stuff that's in every phone touch screen, to an addiction.
A lot of addiction can lead to this type of thing. What do you mean by... Is it, is that addiction fueling kind of the, the sickness that we're talking about? And it's not just the consumer, right? I heard that kind of that B2B touchpoint
Tomasz: Yeah, so there's a broader discussion here about the role of those devices in our society, and let's not get there. What I actually refer to in the book is our dopamine addiction to scrolling. The moment you scroll, you touch critical minerals. But... 'Cause what is this? It's indium tin oxide. So it's a composition of tin oxide and indium oxide.
90% of this is indium. Tiny, invisible grid on top of your screen that allows you to actually connect with what as apps, right? Which themselves are also based on [00:15:00] different color codes that are introduced by various rare earths, right? So it's really that addiction, that social addiction that scrolling addiction that's, having a, in my view, a nefarious effect on our youth that is actually bringing us in direct contact with critical minerals on a daily basis.
So why I compare it is that in the past it was sugar, right? Because as we, evolved as, as, as, as humans, biologically we're looking for sugar. There were not so many orchards full of apples and pears. So we were hungry for that, and this sort of stayed on and eventually led to various diseases and so on, as we had s- just too much of that.
Now maybe it's too much of some of those critical minerals because of what they do, what they make possible in various technologies that we're dependent on
Matt: Yeah. So that, that dependency piece down to the individual level, check your screen time a little bit. It's worthwhile, worth- worthwhile to think about. Kinda transitioning this a little bit to, the market failure that nobody could price correctly, look, looking out ahead.
As an example we talked about, the byproduct, byproduct problem with gallium in, in plain terms. [00:16:00] Why does nobody pay for, why does nobody pay for that byproduct, and what would it take to fix that?
Tomasz: Okay. So just to explain, when you mine something, it's very unusual that there's only one element to it. Could be the case of course, non-metallic, so like coal or, maybe iron ore would be very very homogenous. However, for most, there's gonna be always some byproducts. Copper with silver and copper with cobalt, nickel with cobalt and so on.
That second element receives a reduced payability. A smelter would never pay you 100% for anything, but for those, sometimes it's much less, so say 70%, 60% and so on. And some of these materials are paid very little, and there are some among those, some very important critical minerals that are not paid at all by the smelter.
And the example you brought up example of gallium, is that about 78% of bauxite around the world, which is for aluminum production, ends up in China, the smelters in China. This is how dominant Chinese aluminum production is. And they don't pay for the gallium that's [00:17:00] associated with this. Now, a good gallium byproduct will be about 100 ppm or larger.
But even if it's 50 or 60 ppm, that can still be economic in the Bayer process afterwards during the production of aluminum because it reports to sodium hydroxide, and you can just skim it at, 200, 300 ppms. And the way the global aluminum industry has evolved or devolved in the last 20 years is that, other countries send bauxite to China with all of this gallium, and China pays zero for that.
A number I saw, I think it was from research by Kooning Technologies here in the US, is that if all of this gallium was actually paid by the smelters in China, that would be worth about $10 billion on 100% payability, and that is actually quite linear on the way down. So if it's 50% payability, that would be about five billion dollars.
It's still considerable because we're so dependent on access. It comes back to my first argument. Access and security of access is so important. Gallium is vital for magnets, and gallium nitrate is vi- vital for optoelectronics, and gallium arsenide as [00:18:00] well for semiconductors. And when it can end up in important array radars, right?
Like those that some of those we lost this year in, in the Middle East. Very important. So gallium nitrate is a critical element and the fact that China managed to control 99% of that was really an alarming case
Matt: It's incredible the amount of, that level of control and kind of that I think the word that I really like that you used was kind of capitulation of, to, a lot of this. And I think we all go about our daily lives without thinking about it. It's like s- seen but not seen and not really urgently acted upon.
But it's a, there's a furious urgency to this. And, for manufacturers right now, we're under, in this window where I think you described it in our, when we first met as a reprieve from China's leadership in a weird way. But if China were to turn off the tap it's bad news for, starting with automotive.
Yeah that's pr- the primary concern. But when that suspension occurs on China's export controls when and if if a plant manager reads that as, problem solved, what would you tell them?
Tomasz: So let's just fine-tune on this [00:19:00] specific point because the re- reprieve was valid since late October last year till early November this year. Essentially China agreed to continue selling rare earths, especially heavy rare earths to the United States, indeed worldwide. The first and foremost, that's not what has happened since.
The controls are very restrictive. There are an entire list of companies that aren't allowed to receive the Chinese material. It's like a valve that they open and close depending on, different other issues that they want to use this as leverage for. However, we had a meeting recently between Trump and Xi Jinping in, in Washington.
And all I know is the Chinese party wanted to extend that for another, I think two years, so until the end of Trump's term. So it's interesting what happens since, but let me just step back In 2025, when we're moving towards that, that meeting and, US side jacked up the tariffs on China repeatedly, China was ready with those strains on rare earths.
It was like, Bertrand Russell wrote about the game of chicken in game theory. Remember [00:20:00] that
from Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean in 1955, wherever. So the two cars and which one yields, right? It's not in the interest of both to escalate, right? Because that's the worst, that's the worst outcome.
And China took a view that it was in their interest to escalate and we yielded. Why? Because they believe that the costs of eventual crash would be less for them than for us, and the reason being is that this, rare earth oxide market is near maybe six billion dollars, but the value downstream is over $10 trillion in terms of manufacturing loss.
And so there are loss, there are export loss in terms of, money loss by exporters that they actually don't care about and can subsidize. Oh is no, there's no comparison to the damage that would generate when the Ford plant shut down in, spring of 2025 in reaction to those restrictions.
So we have that asymmetry where they turned the game of the chicken to game of the bully, and we yielded. So now what's really interesting, and still to be confirmed, is that the Chinese wanted to extend it by two years, and the [00:21:00] US side, Bessent and Andrea came back and said, "No, let's do it till January."
Now, in January, there's one thing that kicks in is the DFARS, so it's a Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. And that means that for defense sector, the, the operators and importers will no longer be allowed to source Chinese material, in a way turning the tables on the Chinese. Now, wh- whether they will have source from, anyo- anywhere else, I don't have any knowledge of that.
But interesting signaling, right? Because that reduces the option, the value of this long-term option that China had as a bully. And so now suddenly, at least on the defense side, it's back to the game of chicken and let's see what happens in January. That doesn't solve anything for commercial civilian producers who need to, look for alternatives, and I think here China will continue to play its game.
But I think the Chinese side was surprised by the shortening of the reprieve at the request of the US side. This sort of complicates their game a bit.
Matt: It does complicate it a little bit. There's a lot of nuance in the trade negotiations. You hear about the, the bigger number or, you know, like you said, this game of chicken on [00:22:00] the overall economy. But really when you get down into the details there's levels to it. And just from the perspective of a manufacturer, what should a manufacturer's sourcing map actually look like, heading into January?
There's just any insight you can provide there, because we've had a lot of takes on just make it here. Sometimes standing up, supply chains here is a bit difficult or it's longer windows than you anticipated. But is there anything at this kind of macro level that should be on the mind of a manufacturer and how they can, work their supply chain map?
Tomasz: Yeah don't wait for the government to solve your problem. Don't hope that we will somehow solve our strategic adversarial relationship with the PRC. It's not gonna happen anytime soon. Diversify as much as possible from the Chinese material sooner rather than later. What does it mean?
Stop considering your procurement department as a cost center. Think strategically about it. In some cases, the cost is not huge, but there are people who believe that their jobs depend on getting the cheapest material possible. And yeah, I know it's difficult, and I know it's expensive because the price differential has opened hugely for some of these, definitely for [00:23:00] yttrium and gadolinium and s- some others between what we see, say, in warehouse numbers in Rotterdam b- and the Chinese prices.
But I don't think we have a choice. Now the name of the game is to diversify away from the PRC sooner rather than later. And while the sources are still very limited, the r- actual price that you will negotiate with whoever comes is gonna be somewhere in between those massive, very high prices of the Rotterdam warehouse based on very small volumes and the sort of bottom-feeding Chinese prices.
I think it would be a mistake to just try and kick the can down the road and hope that things will somehow magically be solved by someone else. If we are in a conflict, not by our choice then simply security is the number one issue. And externalizing more production, so let's say we cannot have magnets, therefore, let's move our electric motor production to China, is not the answer because after electric motor, there will be another thing, and nothing's gonna be left here
Matt: Yeah, that, that domino effect is pretty you can ti- take that short view window back 20, 30 years in talking globalization, and there's been, a lot of thought around [00:24:00] some of the secondary effects of a lot of this. And, when we talked in our call a- about capital allocation and the actual fix to this problem, not going with next quarter's earnings and the lowest cost factory floor gave some great examples of, building manufacturing capacity in other places, away from the PRC, I think as you just described, is important, but folks are looking to where that capital allocation should be judged on the strategic necessity, obviously, but what does that look like in practice for a manufacturer when they're actually choosing to build and maybe shift away from the PRC?
Tomasz: So there's gonna be a risk to this because first, the technological change is so fast. Secondly, in many of these areas, we're starting from scratch or near scratch, so getting the human capital to actually back it up properly and operate it is a problem. But I think what's important is that give ourselves a little more flexibility.
I know it's easier to say, for me as I run sort of a liquid fund mostly, and much more difficult for someone who's putting a specific plant or a specific line in a plant towards something. And, if there is a strong technological [00:25:00] substitute against that in three years from now, then, what do you do with that?
So it's easy to say. But I will always just go back to the macro picture. We are seeing a massive CapEx expansion in the West. Civilian, of course, the hyperscalers and data centers on the one hand, but also military and all the procurement for the military, which is way beyond the typical, top five companies, which was the case during the, power projection globalization era.
So that's very different here in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. And you can say but we have high interest rates. I stopped really paying attention to this. Do you remember the no growth recovery after the GFC, the years of twenty ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, where the interest rates were, like, really at 1% or less?
How much CapEx was there? Nothing. Next to nothing. There was no capital expenditure at all. And therefore, this is not the driver of capital expenditure. We should really grasp the opportunity of the new technologies changing and the fact that we are in second Cold War. And you know what? Most of our technological advancement happened during the first Cold War, so we should grasp it as an opportunity
Matt: Yeah, [00:26:00] it really is an era of opportunity, and I had never thought about it in terms of the the global financial crisis and interest rates. You just hear a lot of consumer talk about interest rates, which, are obv-obviously concerning, but from a capital expenditure standpoint the legislation that was passed last year we're all monitoring that and seeing where money is flowing and where it's going.
But a really great point. You-- W- in our initial conversation, you had, talked about we're, building manufacturing capacity close by, nearshoring certain things, having these secondary and third effects, and that capital markets have completely failed to, analyze this in a deeper way.
But the effects on immigration and the effects on friendly relations within a hemisphere, is that something that you see taking shape over the past, you know, couple months in, in, in this hemisphere?
Tomasz: Yeah. So unfortunately, we haven't solved our problems with Canada. I can't wait. As a mining and metals person, that's the most natural fit I would see, so I hope that we will. I'm encouraged by the Greenland deal, probably our largest strategic win so far this year. Getting Europeans to understand that there is an issue there, and actually signing something that's gonna solve our problems, [00:27:00] our security problems, and Canada's security problems, by the way as well, 'cause Greenland happens to be in North America for many years to come.
So it's positive, and I think there is a lot of effort i- in this direction. Let's see how the Brazilian elections go, right? The second tour. I'm just... i'm very curious because Latin America could become a very important force backing the United States and our strategy around the world in general.
I do think there will be opportunities for friendshoring and nearshoring and so on. And probably we'll end up with a world that's a little healthier. There's always a risk putting all eggs in one basket, and especially a rotten basket of someone who considers us an enemy. I think, maybe 2020s, as much as we see it with trepidation and wars in different places and proxy wars maybe from a perspective of several decades, it wouldn't look as dark as we're seeing it right now
Matt: Yeah, I think the hindsight will be very different than some of the lived experience. Ideally, there's been some strategic moves that have been made. One thing that we ask of every guest, Tomasz, is if a listener takes one thing from this conversation into work the next week and they have the [00:28:00] opportunity to think about it what should that be?
Is there thing, things that operations leaders can think about? This seems like a big macro talk, but it's o- obviously something that a million small decisions are made every day. What would be your advice to that manufacturing leader?
Tomasz: So I think the, the way AI is being still treated as just simply an LLM thing on our machine, it's gonna change very soon, and it's changing already, and there are several companies that are driving this. Factoring it in and introducing this as quickly as possible on the factory floor and engaging it's such a massive time saver and such a massive source of flexibility that anybody who underestimates it, and we have, of course, attacks from both left and right against the data centers and so on, but this is a massive game changer.
And it could be a huge source of productivity where this large capital outlay, and I'm not talking about the hyperscalers, I'm talking about the application for actual manufacturing could pay off very easily, especially in higher interest rates. Not gonna cost us that much in real [00:29:00] terms. So I definitely think that w- we should be a little more optimistic despite all the noise, despite all the, you know, politics around it, and the actual threats that we face from our adversaries around the world.
This is an area that could completely transform the way we think about the productive process way above whatever we could imagine even five years from a- ago
Matt: Really good advice and something that, I've seen take shape over the past year or two where people were worried about it taking jobs where it's like how much productivity can we get out of it and how much uplift is there? Let's talk a little bit for, the close a little bit about your book "The Mineral War" and where can our listeners go to find a copy and follow along with your work?
Tomasz: Yeah, so Mineral War is available on Amazon. It should be also available at any bookstore because IngramSpark's holds it in wholesale. So you can always ask a local bookstore to, to get you a copy. We write an a weekly newsletter about this industry specifically. We are InvestTerraDen.
So I-N-V-E-S-T, Terra, T-E-R-R-A, Den, D-E-N .com, and [00:30:00] anybody can, learn more about all of those different materials. We delve into the geopolitics of this and the supply chain developments and some more specific industry events on a regular basis. I also run a podcast entitled Tyranny Today.
It's a much broader set of topics, geoeconomics around the world geopolitics, geostrategy as well, and usually comes on Saturdays. It's available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, all the other usual platforms
Matt: Excellent. We will be sure to link those in the comments to our podcast here. And thank you very much for joining us today. It's been a great conversation and a lot of great information, something our our listeners can take away and think about. So Tomasz, thank you for joining me on US Manufacturing today.
Tomasz: Thanks a lot for having me, man
Matt: Thank you so much. To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our website and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies from the administration and how they will impact you as a manufacturer.
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