RE:RE:RE:Not sure if this chart worksG"Day Goldst69. I used an Aussie greeting since you made reference to Australia. I think you are right that the USA, together with the collective west should (and under Trump) will try to devellop a non-Chinese/Russian supply chain for industrial minerals, especially the rare earth minerals. We, meaning the West, have the deposits, it just comes down to the price for that the mine developers will get for their production when the mines are producing. If western governments will guarantee a price 5/10/15 years down the road those mines will be developed in Canada/usa/austalian/etc.
The problem mining in the west is it is done with private capital, and private capital expects a return on investment. And for something as risky as mining the POTENTIAL return should be pretty sweet. But the Chinese, and perhaps to a lesser extent the Russsians, look at minerals and mining from a geopolitical stand point. The governments of those countries are willing to support their miners if the price gets low and the company is no longer profitable. IMO if the Chinese government government sees a lot of western private investment in rare earths, or copper smelting,etc. because the profits are high, there will be a phone call to the ceo of the chinese miners,/smelting co. and the conversation is more or less, "drive down the price of these commodities so low that the private capital in the west loses interest."The Chinese know that western capital is always chasing the next shiny trinket stock theme. Just look back, rare earth's were hot, now they're not. Lithium stocks were hot, and now they aren't. What changed the investor interest in those themes, the price of the commodity collapsed. So the Chinese government can almost stop investment of western, private capital in specific areas just by driving down the price of the commodity for a year or two. If the price of the commodity is too low, none of the western mining projects get built.
The above mentioned analysis is a pretty air tight arguement. If you want to talk about something more speculative we could jump down the rabbit hole of Chinese/Russian back door financial support to NGO's that fight tooth and nail so many potential projects in the "free" liberal democratic countries. I am not against all NGO's, some do good work and they do keep big companies on their toes. But iapparentely, on average, it takes 28 YEARS, yes almost 3 decades, to take an initial discovery of an ore body until the first production in the west.(YA think it takes that long in china or russia!!) Who in their right mind would invest in something that takes so long to get up and running. PART of that eternity of time is due to lots of government bureaucracy and dealing with NGO's who often don't want anything built. That is good for Chinese/Russian dominance in certain fields. Thes west currently dominants high tech and they are doing what we can to stay on top. So the Chinese/Russians have carved out the areas where they can dominate, and hence use as leverage against the west.
Hope somebody reads this post and comments because it took awhile to craft!!