S2 E83: The Oil Embargo Was a Car Crash. The Mineral War Is Cancer. | Tomasz Nadrowski, Amvest Terraden

In 1973, the oil embargo hit the West like a car crash — sudden, loud, impossible to miss. China's control of critical minerals is the opposite: it's cancer. It grew for thirty years, and most of the West only noticed once it started to hurt. Tomasz Nadrowski is a portfolio manager at Amvest Terraden, where he runs an equity strategy that starts with geopolitics, and the author of "Mineral War: China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction." He argues this is not a trade dispute and not a competition. It is a war in the strict Clausewitz sense: it became one the moment the West finally reacted. Dustin and Daniel dig into how the monopoly got built, why the West handed it over, and the one Chinese advantage he believes the West can actually beat. In this episode: \- Why monopoly in commodities is normal — and weaponization is the line China crossed \- The push factor nobody talks about: Western capital markets refused to fund the midstream for forty years, and the G7 flagged the risk back in 2003 \- Lynas's Kuantan capex came in roughly a third higher for one reason — you can no longer buy Chinese equipment \- Cost of capital is the one Chinese advantage the West can beat; cheap labor, cheap land, a managed currency and subsidies are not winnable \- What a German carmaker's procurement chief told him in Frankfurt: "we will always buy from the cheapest source" \- Why downstream OEMs out-lobby the mining industry, and how that already killed critical-minerals policy twice \- It is not just magnets: inverters, capacitors, coating hardware, refining equipment, legacy chips, track-laying machines \- The 14th Five-Year Plan's innovation centers, and why what gets invented in China now stays in China \- DNA sequencing costs 500 to 1,000 dollars in the West; China subsidizes it to 50 \- Externalizing the US tax code so American capital can fund Australian and Canadian projects, and harmonizing tariffs by HS code instead of blunt country-wide actions \- Why China's decision to apply its restrictions worldwide, rather than only to the US, may have been its biggest strategic error Guest: Tomasz Nadrowski, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Amvest Terraden Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com 🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.