The US has established a new fund to invest in critical minerals alongside Orion Resource Partners and Abu Dhabi’s ADQ, as the Trump administration seeks to challenge Beijing’s dominance of resource supply chains…The investment from the US International Development Finance Corp. is a key step in President Donald Trump’s push to secure minerals deals around the world. The three partners have made initial capital commitments totaling $1.8 billion and are targeting an eventual pool of $5 billion, according to a statement released by Orion on Thursday…Under Trump, the US government has made it a priority to shore up access to strategically important minerals such as copper, cobalt and rare earths, which are required for the defense industry and the energy transition. There is widespread anxiety among Western leaders about the future availability of such materials, given concerns about insufficient investment and China’s grip on supply chains.

The price of cobalt sulphate entering the EV battery supply chain in China is now trading over 120% higher than at the start of the year – averaging $7,775 a tonne in September (still nowhere near the 2022 peak of $19,000 per tonne)…Cobalt prices would likely remain elevated and could rise further under the quota scheme put in place for 2026 and 2027. That would have played a part in the US Department of War cancelling a $500 million tender to stockpile the metal…Cobalt consumption in EV batteries overtook other sources of demand like aerospace several years ago and the downstream impact of the DRC strategy has been swift…So far this year the value of installed cobalt tonnes in EV batteries totals $1.3 billion, up 51% compared to the same period last year. The sales weighted average value of the cobalt contained in EV batteries has hit $73 per vehicle, up from less than $40 at the start of the year…The top automaker based on cobalt spending is Volkswagen at $150.5 million. Volkswagen, and its many brands, including Audi, Skoda, Cupra and Porsche, is having a bumper year with full electric and plug-in hybrid sales up 45% year on year for the first eight months of 2025. In turn Wolfsburg’s spending on cobalt is up more than 110%...That it tops the charts on cobalt spending is an indication of its heavy reliance on NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) battery chemistries compared to rivals…Number two Geely, which owns, among others, the Volvo and Polestar brands, spent $106.2 million over the first eight months of the year, a 19% jump, while Tesla’s spending increased by 31% year over year to $94.1 million…Tesla first introduced LFP batteries into its line-up in 2020 and now 44% of Tesla battery packs hitting roads for the first time this year sport this cathode. That helps explain why the automaker sits at number three for cobalt while consistently topping the charts for overall battery metal consumption.

Just three years after Canada called China a “disruptive global power,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand says Canada now views Beijing as a strategic partner in a dangerous world…Anand told The Canadian Press on Monday that a strategic partnership with China means going beyond allowing individual irritants to strain the entire relationship and permitting Canada to advance its economic and security interests…Her visit marks a shift away from the federal government’s 2022 Indo-Pacific strategy, which branded China as “an increasingly disruptive global power” that holds “interests and values that increasingly depart from ours.”…While she did not name U.S. President Donald Trump directly, his tariffs have hit numerous Canadian sectors and hindered foreign investment, even after Ottawa emulated American restrictions on Chinese vehicles…In Beijing last week, both countries agreed to revisit the strategic partnership they signed in January 2005. Anand said both sides will have the agreement “renewed and refocused” to meet today’s needs…She said Canada’s foreign policy now rests on the three pillars she outlined at the United Nations this fall: strengthening defence, building economic resilience and advancing core values such as human rights….Carney said last month Canada could “engage deeply” with China on commodities, energy and basic manufacturing, but with guardrails that “left off to the side” anything that could “bridge into national security, privacy” or other matters.

In the semiconductor world, innovation isn't advancement it's survival. And 2025 has delivered a few jolts that have prospects to redefine the world order in technology. Peking University's new bismuth-based transistor, an all-silicon-free construction, has surpassed speed and efficiency records, outperforming the world's best Intel and TSMC chips. Across the Pacific, Purdue University's quantum group is unlocking the potential of the properties of bismuthene, as the future arrives at stable, fault-free quantum computing…Standard silicon transistors, the foundation of computing for decades, are coming up against atomic-scale roadblocks. As the chip shrinks beyond 3nm, leakage current, heat accumulation, and quantum tunneling make next-generation scaling brutally hard…Utilizing a 2D bismuth-based semiconductor material layer (Bi₂O₂Se) encapsulated in an ultra-high-k (high-k) dielectric gate (Bi₂SeO₅), their structure maintains superior electron mobility at atomic thinning ranges as well. The outcomes are remarkable... 40% quicker performance and 10% reduced power usage than Intel's most current GAAFETs as well as TSMCs N3 nodes…Bismuthene an atomically thin bismuth sheet isn't another regular 2D material. It's a topological insulator with a whopping 800 meV band gap that can demonstrate the Quantum Spin Hall Effect (QSHE) at room temperature. In simpler words, it is an electrical conductor in the edges with zero resistance, but acts as an insulator in the bulk — a very rare property of next-generation quantum devices…With skyrocketing demand, bismuth is fast becoming one of the planet's most strategically short resources…China's latest export ban has seen the price of bismuth rise by 50% in 2025, disrupting high purity supplies in manufacturing and research…But North America's secret ace in the hole is Fortune Minerals (TSX: FT)…Their NICO project in the Canadian Northwest Territories contains approximately 12% of world bismuth reserves, as well as cobalt, gold, and copper... all essential components of an energy transition and technology manufacturing base. Fortune's vertically-integrated production with an in-Alberta hydrometallurgical refinery — puts it among the very few scaleable, non-Chinese producers of 4N (99.99% pure) bismuth in the world. For the next generation of AI processors, memory, and quantum engines, being secured by supply through allied producers such as Fortune Minerals isn't a hedge. It’s strategic survival.