PMT Megathread, page-1485

This is really the story of the end of last year and the beginning of this year now, as China continues to pour acid on hillsides and extract Lepidolite to drive other western suppliers out of business, we will see who is swimming without trunks when the tide goes all the way out. This is all about the destruction of Western supply because several major suppliers i.e. Canada, Australia and potentially the USA have prohibited Chinese companies from owning more rock supply. The brine supply is slow to come to market and difficult to upscale because of local politics and other Argentina and Chile-specific things. Africa is their backyard but will require some more time and lots of brown paper bags to make it a reliable supply for hard rock Li.

Chris Ellison's plan to lock up all the rock will be put to the test, but I think the lower the vertically integrated Chinese suppliers and users of Leipolite drive the market down, the bigger the rebound is going to be once the reality of physical stockpiles hits, exacerbated by high-cost producers switching off supply (e.g. CXO and others). The question is how much the local people in China are prepared to take, as far as local pollution and environmental degradation go and/or external shock by some sort of black swan event like a waste dump failure/ a large-scale Thallium/Ta poisoning event or something like that.

The other big unknown is something that is in Nero's Russel 'Rusty' Delroy predictions where he hinted at in interviews about the EU nations standing idly by while the Chinese EV manufacturers destroy the European car manufacturing industry, I can't see the governments of Italy, France and Germany standing by idly watching this happen, and it would seem a given that although it has taken a long time for the European car manufacturers to wake up and realize the threat that they are under when they do, they will be knocking on the doors of every European politician, and a series of protectionist regulatory responses trade tariffs/and environmental taxes are very very likely. The EU isn't very good at anything much except trade barriers and tariffs, and they are extremely good at that.

I am stopped out of PMT at the moment as the investor sentiment turns against all Li producers and explorers and developers but the fun thing will be trying to pick the inflection point of when the world realizes that economic quantities of Li aren't everywhere, and reliable suppliers of Li carbonate/hydroxide and hard rock will need an incentive price to switch back on their supply.