..the rejection could be seen as somewhat of a political win....

..the rejection could be seen as somewhat of a political win. Stopping the chinese from acquiring the assets.

Except that nobody at the government level wants to be seen as a development blocker.
Look at what happened with the heritage legislation in WA.
And the Fed and WA govts are working together on this.

The governments will be looking for a win/win outcome here. They are wanting to develop WA as a new region for critical minerals not just to mine but also develop and process.

She doesn't need pre-sales offtake to finance this deal or the mine building. SQM just might but I doubt it. Some argy bargy may ensure whereby Gina extracts more of the pie.

Gina has $19BILLION dollars in cash. That is serious money and it needs to be put to work, not blocked or stalled.

They want Gina onside to do that and she only understands $ returns. She doesn't want to understand geopolitics.

Secondly, nobody has mentioned the fact Gina may not want to be bound to this deal anymore.

Highly unlikely. She sees herself as a major lithium player especially since it's the demand for iron ore that's going to collapse in the next 2 years as existing projects in China, end. She may want it cheaper that's possible. But she may get an education on what the US is offering in the longer term. Which will make this deal even more of a bargain. Especially also since in 2 years Li market will be absolutely a reversal of today's situation.

Lithium landscape has changed materially over the last 12 months. EV's sales has slown and supply out of africa continues to surpisie.

And it will change again. To the upside. Here's the thing: Li market isn't just EVs (which will be redesigned and refined, it's not as if horseless carriages worked absolutely fine at first but we all use them now) it's also massive storage batteries. These are needed to store energy from solar, wind etc. due to weather issues and just the 24 hour cycle. The demand for Li hasn't even properly started yet it's in infancy. Lead time is about 2 years by when this mine will start to be ready. Iv'e mentioned again and again how China has been flooding the market with their cheaper, and expensively. processed Li. It's also less stable in form leading to the odd explosion.

I would not be at all surpirsed if Gina was back channeling that she could care less if FIRB rejects.

Firstly it's 'couldn't care less'. Not could care less. Why people continue to get this wrong is anyone's guess but it's lazy at best.

She gets to walk away and buy something else far cheaper.

I'm not saying any of the above is likely, just that's a possible scenario.

see above.

Market hasn't closed this "Discount" for a reason.
It's distracted.

Uncertainty remains and could remain for a quite a while.
That's the entire market you're talking about including the fallout/washup as the US and China realign and organise some kind of a deal over China flooding the world with their cheap exports, they are desperate in many ways they are export reliant and face massive social unrest with their own financial collapses, and want to dominate the world EV market. The US will offer them something, deals will get done.

But a critical minerals policy and defence policy is not to be ignored.