After three years of war that forged a new unity within NATO, the Trump administration has made clear it is planning to focus its attention elsewhere: in Asia, Latin America, the Arctic and anywhere President Trump believes the U.S. can obtain critical mineral rights. Moreover, this is why Trump to a large extent has his eye on annexing Canada and Greenland, both of which have an abundance of critical minerals such as uranium, graphite and lithium. Critical minerals are currently used in over 230 sectors of the U.S. economy, from energy infrastructure to advanced technology manufacturing, and from aerospace engineering, including satellites, to medical equipment. Critical minerals are the building blocks for the green and digital economy and demand for them will only grow throughout the global energy transition. Disruption potential is related to how much of a commodity’s global production is concentrated in countries that are relatively unwilling or unable (due to political or economic instability, workforce or infrastructure inadequacies, regulations, etc…) to supply the U.S. with critical minerals. Some critical minerals are produced primarily in countries that are economically or politically unstable, or do not have a reliable trade relationship with the U.S. — thereby representing a higher supply risk. This however does not apply to Canada which is a stable supplier of minerals in general, including copper, zinc, phosphorus, silicon metal, cobalt, high-purity iron ore, and rare earth elements.
The lack of stability in Ukraine is a major reason why Trump apparently ha turned down Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s extraordinary offer that the U.S. be granted a 50 percent interest in all of Ukraine’s critical mineral resources as compensation for past and future support of the war with Russia.
However, Canada recognizes that critical minerals are the foundation on which modern technology is built upon. They’re used in a wide range of essential products, from mobile phones and solar panels to electric vehicle batteries and medical applications. By building critical minerals value chains, Canada can become a major global supplier of choice for critical minerals and the clean energy and technology sources they enable. For this reason, Canada is not willing to simply give away control of these precious minerals to the U.S. or any other nation for that matter. They are also essential to Canada’s economic or national security.
Canada has already partnered with the U.S. when it comes to discovering and mining critical minerals. In January 2020, the Canada-U.S. Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals was announced to advance bilateral interest in securing supply chains for the critical minerals needed in strategic manufacturing sectors. Canada has also worked with other countries such as Japan to encourage cooperation on international standard-setting for critical minerals, as well as several multilateral organizations such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), the World Bank, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), and the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF). The U.S. is also an active member of these multilateral organizations.
For these reasons, it is difficult to understand why Trump continues to be so aggressive when it comes to the U.S.-Canada trading relationship. Canada is an exporting nation, which includes most of our natural resources which make up the bulk of exports. Canada is very interested in exporting critical minerals to its allies through various trade agreements, and is investing more in the extraction of these minerals. Canada already provides a stable and growing market when it comes to critical minerals. If Trump wants to ignore the existing cooperation between the two countries, he does so at his own peril and that of those American businesses which rely on a steady and reliable supply chain.
FROLITICKS 