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Geopolitical Mining

Geopolitical Mining Weekly | Week of February 23 – March 1, 2026

This week’s note tracks how critical minerals are moving from strategy language into rules, enforcement, and supply discipline: USTR’s push toward a plurilateral critical minerals deal, rising USMCA review uncertainty,…

Geopolitical Mining

Geopolitical Mining · Weekly

Geopolitical Mining Weekly
Week of February 23 – March 1, 2026

Authors: Marta Rivera | Eduardo Zamanillo

What this week really tells us

This week, six developments showed how critical minerals are moving from strategy language into rules, enforcement, and supply discipline.

In Washington, USTR opened a formal design process for a plurilateral critical minerals agreement, explicitly asking for input not just on trade rules, but on implementation, enforcement, and price related measures.

In North America, the USMCA story shifted from review in 2026 to uncertainty as a tool: Canada’s trade minister warned that the agreement could face annual reviews after 2026, a framing that matters because long cycle mining and midstream investments do not price well under rolling political optionality.

In the Global South, Zimbabwe imposed an immediate ban on exports of raw minerals and lithium concentrates, bringing forward the value addition agenda in a way that directly hits real supply availability into China facing conversion flows, then immediately fed into price signals in China’s lithium market.

Also this week, Indonesia’s state miner Perminas signed an MoU with New Energy Metals (NEM) linked to the Maboumine niobium and rare earth resource in Gabon, with an explicit downstream ambition extending toward magnets an axis building signal linking an African asset to Asian industrial strategy.

On the institutional side, Argentina’s Senate advanced a glacier law reform backed by the Milei government, reframing the boundary between faster project execution and higher legal/social contestation risk in water sensitive environments.

Recommended reading (Geopolitical Mining): https://geopoliticalmining.com/the-day-usa-locked-in-a-critical-minerals-deal-with-argentina-and-the-questions-it-raises-for-chile/

The common pattern is clear: the era of substance is not about who has the best taxonomy or the most speeches. It is about who can translate policy into membership rules, capital instruments, permitting durability, and supply discipline, and which assets sit inside those enforceable lanes versus exposed to policy volatility, legal risk, or benchmark power set elsewhere.

The core tension is simple: the system is building clubs and tools faster than many jurisdictions can build delivery capacity, and capital will reprice the gap.

Geopolitical Mining Advisory

For board-level insight and decision support on mining, legitimacy and industrial strategy, visit Geopolitical Mining Advisory.

Signals of the week

Signal 1: USTR moves from bilateral deals to designing a plurilateral critical minerals club

a) What happened

USTR published a Federal Register notice requesting public comment on the design of a plurilateral agreement on trade in critical minerals, including questions on investment rules, screening mechanisms, implementation and enforcement, and how to phase in price related measures by mineral or mineral group.

The notice directs submissions through a USTR docket and clarifies that commenters do not need to create an account to submit.

b) Why it matters

This is not another partnership announcement. It is the architecture moving toward governance design: who qualifies, under what rules, and with what enforcement logic. In Geopolitical Mining terms, it is the system trying to make secure supply legible in trade commitments and market shaping instruments, not only in diplomatic language.

The inclusion of price related measures in the implementation questions also signals that the U.S. is testing whether trade architecture can support a more managed market outcome in minerals where price volatility or strategic dumping risk undermines investment.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For investors and boards, this implies that eligibility risk is becoming a valuation variable: assets may re-rate based on whether they can sit inside preferential lanes (and meet compliance expectations) rather than merely being good deposits in good jurisdictions.

Recommended reading (Geopolitical Mining): https://geopoliticalmining.com/usa-and-aligned-trading-partners-ustr-maps-a-plurilateral-critical-minerals-deal/

Signal 2: USMCA review risk is reframed as rolling uncertainty

a) What happened

Canada’s trade minister Dominic LeBlanc warned publicly that after the mandatory 2026 review, the USMCA could face annual reviews, increasing uncertainty for North American trade and investment planning.

Reuters also reported Canada discussing potential bilateral arrangements on critical sectors like steel, aluminum and autos alongside USMCA review dynamics, reinforcing the sense that the perimeter may become more modular and negotiated lane by lane.

b) Why it matters

Mining and midstream are long cycle systems. Rolling review risk changes the calculus for processing investments, cross border offtakes, and corridor build out, because the rules horizon becomes shorter than the capex horizon.

In the era of substance, North America’s advantage depends on whether it can preserve a credible perimeter for capital formation while simultaneously tightening security and industrial policy conditions. Annual review framing is the opposite of credibility for multi-year delivery.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For companies, this means North American growth options should be stress-tested under policy renewal volatility, not just commodity cycles, especially where projects depend on cross border processing, tariff treatment, or government linked demand signals.

Signal 3: Zimbabwe’s export ban turns value addition into a hard supply constraint

a) What happened

Zimbabwe announced an immediate ban on exports of all raw minerals and lithium concentrates, citing malpractices and leakages, applying even to shipments in transit and lasting until further notice.

Mining.com reported the minister said export authorisations would be limited to firms with valid mining licences and approved processing capacity, tying exports explicitly to domestic value add conditions.

b) Why it matters

This is the Global South testing bargaining power through supply gating. Whatever one thinks of the policy, it is structurally significant: lithium supply is not only a geology story; it is increasingly a sovereignty and enforcement story.

The immediate impact showed up in market behaviour in China, where Reuters reported lithium prices jumping after the suspension. That linkage matters because it illustrates how quickly a single policy decision in a producing country can transmit into benchmark signals in the dominant conversion market.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For investors and boards, this implies that exposure to ore to China routes carries increasing policy interruption risk. Jurisdictions will demand domestic capture; the investable edge will sit with operators who can credibly build compliant processing capacity, or diversify routing and counterparties.

Signal 4: Lithium pricing reacts in China, benchmark sensitivity to supply gating

a) What happened

Reuters reported that China’s lithium prices rose after Zimbabwe’s export suspension, including a sharp move in the most traded lithium carbonate contract on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange.

b) Why it matters

This is a reminder that in energy transition minerals, price is not only demand driven. It is increasingly shaped by policy shocks, logistics gating, and enforcement actions in producing jurisdictions.

In Geopolitical Mining terms, this is real supply asserting itself: not reserves, not pledges, actual material flows.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For companies, this means offtake and hedging strategies need to model jurisdictional interruption as a first order driver of price, particularly where supply relies on a narrow set of producing countries or export corridors.

Signal 5: Indonesia linked MoU in Gabon (Perminas–NEM), African ore meets Asian downstream ambition

a) What happened

Mining.com reported that Indonesia’s new state miner Perminas signed an MoU with New Energy Metals (NEM), a company linked to the Maboumine niobium and rare earth resource in Gabon, to evaluate a potential strategic partnership. The MoU links the Gabon based resource opportunity to the development of a rare earth value chain in Indonesia, including feasibility work down to magnet manufacturing.

b) Why it matters

This is a corridor building move outside the US centred architecture: a state backed industrialising actor is seeking upstream optionality through a corporate partnership tied to a specific African asset, while anchoring value creation downstream in Indonesia.

The key signal is not the MoU itself, it is the direction of travel: producing jurisdictions and asset operators are under pressure to monetise resources with greater leverage, while industrialising countries search for feedstock security and downstream resilience. The system becomes more corridor based and less purely market based.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For investors and boards, this implies that rare earth competitiveness will increasingly be determined by end to end chain design (resource + processing + magnet capability + market access), not by isolated upstream ownership.

Signal 6: Argentina’s glacier law reform advances, execution speed vs legal durability

a) What happened

Reuters reported Argentina’s Senate passed a reform to the glacier protection law backed by President Javier Milei’s government, aimed at easing interpretations seen as constraining mining investment. The reform would shift key definitional and regulatory power toward provinces and still required debate in the lower house.

b) Why it matters

This is a familiar Geopolitical Mining trade off, sharpened by a water sensitive context: institutional moves intended to accelerate execution can also increase litigation exposure and legitimacy risk, especially where environmental boundaries become contested and governance becomes more fragmented across provinces.

For real supply, the risk is that faster on paper becomes slower on the ground if disputes expand and permitting durability weakens.

c) Implications for capital and strategy

For investors and boards, this implies Argentina’s opportunity set may widen, but underwriting must sharpen around legal durability, provincial capacity, and the intensity of water legitimacy narratives, not only federal reform signalling.

Signals to watch

  • Whether USTR’s plurilateral consultation produces draft text that clarifies membership rules, compliance, and the operational meaning of price related measures.
  • Whether USMCA review politics translate into concrete sector by sector lanes (and what that means for cross border processing and offtake certainty).
  • Zimbabwe: whether the export ban evolves into a licensing and processing framework with transparent criteria, or remains discretionary, raising long term supply reliability risk.
  • Whether lithium benchmark sensitivity to policy shocks persists, implying a higher geopolitical volatility premium in battery materials.
  • Perminas-NEM (Gabon): whether the MoU becomes a structured work program (JV terms, financing, permitting plan), moving from form to substance.
  • Argentina: whether the glacier law reform advances in the lower house and how quickly legal challenges or provincial divergence emerge.

Three strategic questions for this week

  1. As USTR designs a plurilateral critical minerals agreement, are we mapping our portfolio against future eligibility conditions (processing location, investment screening, compliance, enforcement), and deciding deliberately which assets must be inside the lane versus which can remain exposed?
  2. With USMCA framed as potentially subject to rolling review, are we pricing North American growth assumptions with a policy horizon discount, and prioritising assets whose economics remain resilient under corridor or tariff uncertainty?
  3. As producing countries tighten export conditions (Zimbabwe) and reform driven jurisdictions seek to accelerate execution (Argentina), are we treating enforcement capacity and legal durability as material drivers of real supply, on par with grade, metallurgy, and capex?
Cover of the book Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining

For the full Geopolitical Mining framework behind this article, see our book Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining.

Sources for this week’s note