Germany’s auto lobby is warning that the country’s role as Europe’s core automotive production platform is starting to erode in a way that could become self-reinforcing: once suppliers decide new capex belongs abroad, the industrial ecosystem at home loses scale, learning effects, and the dense local networks that made it globally competitive in the first place.

The VDA’s message is that this is no longer a theoretical risk but a decision cycle that has already begun, with investment plans being cut back in Germany and employment reductions following behind.

The sharp run-up in memory chip prices is turning what used to be a “component cost” subplot into a primary driver of corporate earnings dispersion across global tech and consumer-electronics markets. When memory is cheap and abundant, it’s largely invisible in margin models; when prices spike and supply tightens, it becomes an immediate tax on any company that ships hardware and can’t either pass the cost on or redesign around it.

That is why you’re seeing a pronounced split in equity performance: memory producers are being rewarded as scarcity rents accrue to the upstream, while downstream device makers and component integrators are being punished as investors mark down profitability and volume assumptions.

The U.S. push to secure African critical minerals is evolving into a distinctly “financialized” form of supply-chain competition: instead of trying to displace China by operating mines on the ground in higher-risk jurisdictions, Washington is increasingly trying to redirect flows through offtake contracts, marketing rights, and state-backed financing that can pull material into U.S.-aligned value chains without assuming day-to-day operational exposure.

Ahead of the Indaba conference in Cape Town, this as an attempt to win the short-term contest for molecules and metal units, like copper, cobalt, and a growing list of associated byproducts, even while China retains dominant positions in mining ownership, infrastructure buildout, and refining capacity.

Indonesia is trying to widen its critical-minerals story beyond nickel and tin by moving upstream into rare earths and, just as importantly, into the processing know-how that turns “interesting rocks” into strategic capability.

The government has mapped eight mining blocks with significant rare-earth potential across resource-rich regions such as Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bangka Belitung, and that two research initiatives are being prepared in Mamuju, West Sulawesi to develop domestic rare-earth processing technology.

Indium’s surge in Western spot markets is a reminder that the most strategically consequential commodities are often the least liquid and the most poorly understood. A metal that rarely features in mainstream commodity dashboards has suddenly re-priced to roughly $500-$600 per kilogram in Rotterdam, its highest level since early 2015, after gaining more than 55% since September.

Traders attribute the move to a combination of tightening physical availability and a speculative rush that has migrated from China’s retail-driven metals boom into indium futures on the Zhonglianjin exchange, turning a niche byproduct market into a momentum trade.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is preparing to unveil a new 2026-2030 strategy that amounts to the sharpest course correction yet for Vision 2030: fewer “signature” mega-projects as the center of gravity, more emphasis on scalable sectors that can absorb capital, generate cashflows, and pull in international co-investment.

The shift is being framed internally as a reset rather than a retreat. The PIF has already previewed the blueprint with key investors and strategic partners at a Riyadh conference, signaling that this is as much about restoring investor confidence and deal flow as it is about rearranging domestic priorities.

The European Commission’s internal options paper on free CO₂ allowances is effectively Brussels admitting that the core political bargain underpinning the EU Emissions Trading System is no longer stable.

For two decades, the ETS has tried to do two things at once: raise the carbon cost of industrial pollution to drive decarbonisation, while cushioning exposed manufacturers with free permits to prevent “carbon leakage” and preserve competitiveness against imports from jurisdictions without comparable carbon pricing.

India’s talks with Brazil, Canada, France, and the Netherlands on joint critical-minerals deals are the clearest sign yet that New Delhi is shifting from a “buy-and-stockpile” mindset toward an end-to-end supply-chain strategy: co-invest in exploration, secure offtake from mines, build processing capability, and develop recycling loops that can reduce import dependence over time.

The focus on lithium and rare earths is unsurprising, as those are the two choke-point categories where China’s dominance is most strategically constraining, but the more important detail is India’s explicit interest in processing technologies. That is where the real geopolitical leverage sits, because mining is geographically distributed while refining, separation, and metallurgical know-how are far more concentrated.