Mineral buyers need alternatives to concentrated refining supply
The IEA’s 2026 outlook puts refining concentration and trade restrictions at the centre of mineral security. A well-supplied global market can still leave a buyer exposed.
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Government & Policy
Mining is a policy business wearing a geology costume. The orebody decides what is possible; governments decide what actually gets built, where it can be sold, and who is allowed to own it. Here is the desk that tracks the rules — because the rules move the price more reliably than the rocks do.
The house view: in this complex, political risk is the fundamental. A tier-one orebody in the wrong jurisdiction is a stranded asset; a mediocre one with a government subsidy and an offtake mandate behind it can print money. Read the statute before you read the drill results.
Latest from the Policy beat
We track the government levers that move mining and exploration investment across the major jurisdictions — royalties, exploration grants & incentives, trade restrictions and outright bans — and what each one does to the companies on the ground.
Mount Pleasant: Australia needs a coal policy, not another round of uncertainty
The High Court setback leaves the expansion in doubt, while the existing mine can operate until 2032. The economic argument deserves a serious hearing alongside the emissions case.
Rare earths and political connections: who is already facing questions?
Vulcan Elements, 1789 Capital, USA Rare Earth and Cantor Fitzgerald appear in documented congressional scrutiny. Here is what the record establishes, and what it does not.
The copper tariff deadline came and went. Traders have built America a strategic stockpile for free.
The September checkpoint for a decision on US refined-copper tariffs passed without an announcement. The COMEX premium has closed, but close to 700kt of copper is still in US warehouses while Shanghai's exchange stocks have fallen to 47kt.
Indonesia's nickel 'cut' is leaking. Ore now sells below the government's own benchmark.
In August the nickel market was trading an unconfirmed rumour out of Jakarta. By the end of September revised quotas were being approved, laterite ore premiums had turned negative and the limonite benchmark had been cut by almost half. The ministry still won't say by how much the quota has grown.
Queensland lifted its uranium ban once, with a cabinet decision. This government will not say the word.
The LNP opened Queensland to uranium mining in 2012 and Labor shut it again in 2015. Two years into the Crisafulli government the ban stands, the government avoids the subject, and explorers who moved on hope in 2025 are still waiting.
The levers that actually matter
1. Export bans & downstreaming mandates
Indonesia's nickel ore export ban is the single most important policy move in the battery-metals era. By forcing processing onshore, Jakarta dragged the entire midstream — and a wall of Chinese capital — onto its own soil, reset the global cost curve, and left a lot of Western producers underwater. Every resource-rich government on Earth has now seen the playbook and wants its own version. Expect more bans, not fewer.
2. Critical-minerals lists
The US (USGS), the EU, Australia, Canada and others publish "critical" or "strategic" minerals lists. Inclusion is not cosmetic — it unlocks grants, fast-track permitting, stockpiling and defense-production authority. When a metal lands on a list, a funding spigot opens behind it. Watch the lists like earnings.
3. The IRA and the "friend-shoring" rules
The US Inflation Reduction Act tied EV subsidies to where the minerals are mined and processed and to who owns the supplier (the "foreign entity of concern" test). It is the most consequential industrial-policy lever in the West for this basket, and it is explicitly designed to build a non-Chinese supply chain. The catch: you cannot subsidize your way around the fact that China still controls most of the conversion capacity. Policy can change the destination; it cannot conjure refineries overnight.
4. Permitting & the speed of a mine
In the West, the binding constraint usually isn't geology or capital — it's the permit. A copper mine can take 15–20 years from discovery to first metal in the US, and a decent chunk of that is paperwork and litigation. Governments that say they want domestic supply and then keep 15-year permitting timelines are running a contradiction, and the market prices it accordingly.
5. Resource nationalism & royalties
From Chile's lithium strategy to the DRC's mining code to Mexico's lithium nationalization, governments are renegotiating their cut. The lesson for operators is old and permanent: the deal you signed is the deal until the host government decides it isn't.
6. Tariffs, stockpiles & defense
Tariffs on processed metal, strategic stockpiling, and defense-production authority are the blunt instruments. They are increasingly aimed at one structural fact: China's dominance of refining and of graphite, rare earths and gallium/germanium. Export controls cut both ways now.
How we cover it
Policy stories get the same treatment as everything else here: a clear take up top, the actual mechanism explained in plain language, the primary document linked, and a disclosure line wherever the desk's owner has a position adjacent to the policy in question. We are opinionated about whether a policy will work — we are not in the business of telling you how to vote.