As we ride towards the end of the year, it is safe to say there have been few more tumultuous periods in metals and minerals markets than 2025.
Previous decades have seen bigger booms and market crashes, more controversies and success stories, but I can think of no single year in which metals, minerals and mining has taken on such global significance.
In no other year has the gold price been quoted in mainstream news on a weekly basis. In no other year has the general public got to grips with the spelling and pronunciation of antimony, praseodymium and yttrium. In no other year has the first meeting between an incumbent Australian Prime Minister and the incoming US President been dominated by talk about critical minerals.
When US President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals agreement in October, it create much fanfare on both sides of the Pacific, with each government hailing it and American as well as Australian commentators taking forthright positions on the meaning of it.
This is the thing, however. For all the discussion and debate, I am yet to hear from anyone about the practicalities of what the deal will mean for individual companies and projects.
The media statement from Albanese had detail only in the vaguest sense. “The participants’ objective is to assist both countries in achieving resilience and security of critical minerals and rare earths supply chains, including mining, separation and processing,” a joint statement said.
“The participants intend to capitalise on their respective existing domestic mining and processing operations in critical minerals and heavy and light rare earths as well as new capacity to be made available in 2026,” the statement said, before continuing: “To complement the framework, the US and Australian governments said they would take measures to each provide at least $US1 billion in investments towards an $US8.5 billion pipeline of priority critical minerals projects in both countries over the next six months.”
What it actually highlighted is that governments of all persuasions still demonstrate a general and fundamental lack of understanding about the structure of mining and mineral supply chains in general, and a particular ignorance about the critical minerals supply chains they purport to have solved.
The Australia-US agreement and others may be symptomatic of Trump’s approach to international relations; whether diplomacy, security or trade. The lack of detail is a result of the lack of knowledge.
But we are in the era of the deal, not the detail. It is all about the announcement, the handshake and the photo-op, the finer points are not even discussed by leaders.
When the bureaucrats, experts and analysts do get down to those finer details, they will come to realise that while capital is needed, government handouts for mining projects is not the silver bullet to solve the critical minerals supply chain crisis.
The upstream extraction is not the problem – miners are adept at finding solutions for any mineral. If solving the situation was simply a matter of investing in mining projects and then making money, the mining majors would’ve become more involved a long time ago. Instead, the likes of BHP Ltd, Rio Tinto Ltd and Glencore SA have largely taken a back seat – setting aside Rio’s lithium gamble for now.
Neither is the end-use market an issue, despite downbeat assessments, EV sales have rebounded in 2025.
Rather, it is the massive chasm between these two where the issues lie. China dominates this space and both the upstream proponents (the miners) and the end-users (the carmakers) are reluctant to enter it until they have fully assessed these long and complex supply chains and found exactly where the risk and the money is to be found.
If governments are to play a role in solving the situation, this is why they must provide support. It will be risky, but the future of manufacturing in Europe and North America may depend on it.
If they don’t move quickly, Western governments will be overtaken again, this time by Middle Eastern powers such as Saudi Arabia and UAE who are putting their petrodollars to work in the minerals sector.
Miners are renowned for engineering solutions for the most complex problems, but this is one occasion where they can’t go it alone.