Running discussion on SP, page-63515

I am an American, and a AZZVF holder. I have been in for about 4 months now, and enlarge my stake when I can on dips. I have a speculation:

About 2 months ago, the New York Times ran a very prominent article on its front page about how the US had lost out to China insofar as controlling the cobalt market in the DRC is concerned, because the US government had not done enough to prevent the divestment of American cobalt interests in the DRC to Chinese. This is now perceived as a very significant strategic error in the DRC which will hobble the American electrification industry because of the highly concentrated - in China - nature of the cobalt market.

It seems certain that the US does NOT want to make the same mistake in connection with lithium resources in DRC. The US is almost assuredly doing everything it can to convince the current DRC government to jettison the Chinese as prospective lithium partners, and to hook-up with American/Canadian/Australian partners instead. (The NYTimes article mentioned that the US government is now assisting the DRC government with a review of the Chinese cobalt contracts, with an eye towards possible cancellation/revocation of the cobalt contracts in the event that the US/DRC investigators determine that the Chinese have not honored their contractual social and environmental obligations.)

I wonder how the geopolitics of this affect AVZ. It has to be the case that the significant Chinese investment in AVZ is complicating progress on the ML. If the DRC is wanting to show the Chinese who runs the show, and wanting to demonstrate a firm hand in enforcement of contracts with its international partners, then it’s not going to want to be awarding the Chinese a significant chunk of DRC lithium at the same time.

In my opinion, the ML will not be issued until AVZ and/or the affected governments figure out how to freeze out the Chinese.