Canada wants its allies to explore a pricing floor for critical minerals to address what it views as market interference from China, the dominant supplier of metals key to the energy transition…Canada has been thinking about supporting investment through measures such as pricing floors to address alleged market manipulation, the country’s Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Wednesday at an event in Washington. Such measures should factor in an accounting of environmental and labor standards associated with production, he said…China has a dominant role as a producer and processor of minerals found in everything from electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels and technology including military hardware. Such dominance has the US and allies scouring the globe for alternative sources and weighing trade and policy measures to reduce dependence on China…To build mines and secure resources, investors will need “some degree of certainty that the products that they’re actually producing are going to have value at the end of it,” Wilkinson said. “If China can simply intervene and crater the price, you will never see the development of the critical minerals that we have to.”

Here’s just one reason why President-elect Donald Trump is so interested in Greenland: cobalt…It’s a mineral that is highly resistant to wear, heat, and corrosion. It helps put the “stealth” in stealth aircraft — just one of many aviation and aerospace applications. It also has critical high-performance applications in everything from the medical to energy sectors, including being a key component in many lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. So we need cobalt. Who produces it? According to Mining.com, the United States doesn’t make the list of its top-10 producers. In fact, three-quarters of all cobalt production can be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo — at facilities controlled by China. Only about 5% of global production comes from U.S. allies, including Australia and Canada…It’s not just cobalt. China dominates the global market for critical minerals— commonly referred to as “rare earth” minerals — accounting for 70% of world mine production in 2022, according to the U.S. Geological Survey…The U.S. is in the unenviable position of having to play catch up, and Beijing is putting the screws to Washington…But there’s one place where huge deposits of cobalt and critical rare-earth minerals are located: Greenland…Greenland has proven reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals that the U.S. government deems “critical,” including, as The Economist notes, “probably the largest deposits of rare earths outside China.” It also has oil…All this helps explain Trump’s interest in the vast (three times the size of Texas) island, which used to be a Danish colony before being granted home rule almost 50 years ago…So like the Panama Canal, which Trump talks about taking over again, Greenland is in play, part of the intensifying global rivalry between Washington and Beijing for 21st-century geo-strategic dominance.

The imminent presidency of Donald Trump looks set to boost the fortunes of deep-sea-mining as support for harvesting the world’s ocean floors for critical minerals grows, both in Congress and from within his cabinet…Last month, the House of Representatives passed its annual defense funding bill, which included a provision instructing the secretary of defense to provide a feasibility study on whether minerals from the deep sea could be processed within the U.S…That follows a number of cabinet appointments by Trump seen as friendly to deep-sea mining. Elise Stefanik, Marco Rubio, Howard Lutnick and William McGinley have all been nominated for positions on the president-elect’s team and have all previously voiced support for ocean mining…Deep-sea mining remains controversial, but its proponents argue that it could offer a new source of cobalt, nickel, copper and other minerals needed for the energy transition, defense technologies and other needs. However, environmental campaigners and a number of nations including Canada, France and the U.K. have all called for bans or a moratorium on the practice, saying that it could cause irreparable harm to an environment that has largely been untouched by humans. 

Canada is preparing a list of potential US retaliatory tariffs and some of those could be on critical minerals, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Thursday…Wilkinson said that Canada was looking at points of leverage that will create maximum pressure on the United States to come to table to find a resolution to the tariff issue.

For many years, governments offered generous subsidies to encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles. Automakers began to retool factories and offer a wider selection of EVs to meet demand. As prices fell and the technology improved, zero-emission cars went from niche to mainstream and it started to look as though the combustion-engine era may end sooner than expected. But over the past couple of years, the EV transition has wobbled. Governments have scaled back financial incentives for EV buyers, sales growth has tapped the brakes, and the auto industry is having second thoughts about some of the investment plans that were predicated on a more rapid shift to electric…Now there are signs that some of the slowdown pressures may ease and 2025 could mark a turning point…Growth in global EV sales has been decelerating. According to BloombergNEF, sales of all-electric passenger vehicles and plug-in hybrids (which can also be powered by gasoline or diesel) climbed by 24% in 2024. That’s down from a 33% increase a year earlier and a more than doubling of sales in 2021…However, slower growth doesn’t mean no growth. Overall EV sales have continued to reach new annual highs, propelled by China. BNEF estimates China accounted for almost two-thirds of the 17.2 million EVs sold worldwide last year…For the first wave of EVs, carmakers were able to offer drivers the allure of being an early adopter, loading vehicles with tech gadgets and functions to boost their cachet. The drivers they needed to win over next were more cost-conscious. They were also more likely to be skeptical of the technology, and wary of buying an EV when they weren’t sure they could find somewhere to charge it en route. That’s especially the case in the US, where EV charging locations are clustered in cities and along the East and West coasts…In Europe, weaker sales coincided with the removal of government subsidies…Several manufacturers, including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Volvo Car AB and Toyota Motor Corp., have softened their EV ambitions. The legacy carmakers — those with a long history of making combustion-engine vehicles — are now targeting a combined 23.7 million EV sales in 2030, according to BNEF’s last stocktake in September…Amid the more tepid EV sales momentum, some automakers in Europe have warned they could incur billions of euros in fines if they can’t meet the European Union’s tougher pollution standards…In contrast to those struggles, Chinese producers have gained an upper hand in EV technology and are overtaking European brands in China, the world’s biggest EV market. China’s automakers have also been making inroads in Europe where, until relatively recently, they had little presence…China’s price advantage is striking, buoyed by significant manufacturing overcapacity. The cost of batteries there has dropped to $94 per kilowatt-hour on a volume-weighted average basis, while packs are priced almost a third higher in North America and 48% higher in Europe, according to BNEF…. While the headwinds are far from gone, the outlook seems to be improving. BNEF expects global EV sales growth to accelerate to 30% in 2025. China will continue to drive the market forward, aided by a likely extension of a vehicle scrappage scheme, which rewards consumers for trading in an old, higher-emissions car and replacing it with an electric one…Meanwhile, other governments, alarmed by the recent downturn in EV demand, are weighing whether to restore their financial incentives for buyers. All the work carmakers have done reconfiguring their factories to make EVs means they are getting closer to offering a wider selection of more affordable models to entice wavering buyers. European automakers are launching new, cheaper EVs to help meet CO2 targets. The region could see seven new electric models costing less than €25,000 ($25,738) across 2024 and 2025…

European carmakers led by Volkswagen could be forced to pay hundreds of millions of euros to Chinese electric-vehicle rivals to buy carbon credits, as the auto sector tries to avoid potential fines for failing to meet 2025 pollution rules set by Brussels… Under EU rules requiring carmakers to cut emissions, manufacturers lagging behind in the electric transition face the choice of paying billions of euros in fines, boosting EV sales by slashing prices or buying credits from less polluting competitors…The European Commission plans to fine carmakers €95 per car for every gramme of CO₂ per km above a 93.6g limit, based on average emissions across a company’s vehicle sales in 2025…Analysts estimate that some European groups may be forced to buy hundreds of millions of euros worth of carbon credits from Chinese rivals such as BYD, which has one of the largest pools of credits to sell thanks to high EV sales in the EU. According to recent EU filings, Tesla expects to pool credits with companies including Stellantis, Ford and Toyota. The US EV maker has already made more than $2bn in the first nine months of last year from selling credits into emission pooling systems globally. In another pool, Mercedes-Benz has teamed up with Polestar and Volvo — both owned by China’s Geely… Pooling is controversial. Some executives warn that the arrangement will make the European industry less competitive by empowering rivals in China at a time when Brussels has imposed higher tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect the continent’s carmakers…He added that if VW chose to pool, it would probably need to do so with a number of Chinese companies, as BYD might not have enough EV sales in Europe to fill the German group’s gap alone.  

Volkswagen is considering ways to deepen its partnership with U.S. electric car maker Rivian, the German company's CEO told Spiegel magazine in comments published on Friday…"For example, we are thinking about sharing modules and bundling purchasing volumes," Oliver Blume said. "The Volkswagen group offers great opportunities for a small brand like Rivian."