any ideas?, page-23

Sprooker, it might have, but I think the article misses pointing out something.

If there is a new demand for x tonnes of graphite per year, and Tesla plans on only sourcing that from Northern US of A, it doesn't matter to global demand. Global demand has still gone up by x. US companies might suddenly shift focus to the home grown buyer (and save some freight costs in doing so), but the existing other global buyers will still have to buy their graphite somewhere, so they have to look to everyone else. Tesla might try and get it all home grown, but they can't escape having a (positive) effect on the graphite price in the long term. Global demand has still gone up by x. All that is happening is the freight paths are changing as to who gets what from whom.

Tesla is also trying to be a first mover. They might be massive, but there will be other new demand from other lithium-ion battery users, whether that's computers, iphones, grid storage, residential home storage for solar panels, future forklift manufacturers, etc. And that new demand is y.

And then you have brand new uses, like Chinalco taking a lot of SYR's cheap stuff, in a whole new market segment. Sure, it's the cheap stuff that only a low-cost producer like SYR can profitably handle, but it's still a whole new market. Let's call that demand z.

So no matter where Tesla Gigafactory is located, and where it sources it's graphite from, global demand is still going up by x + y + z.

The flipside is supply. Can Uncle Sam handle all that new demand with new supply? Of course not. They didn't list graphite on their critical commodity list for no good reason (as also did the EU).