US Ukraine deal highlights growing importance of critical minerals globally & an opportunity for London.

Should the UK and European allies that have stood by Ukraine be breathing a sigh of relief today as Ukraine finally signs a minerals pact with Trump’s America or should they be concerned about the transactional nature of US engagement? As the Trump White House hail a historic Critical Minerals deal, delayed many times but finally signed today, it reflects how critical minerals and rare earths are increasingly driving policy. These materials power the modern world, from i-phones and solar panels to defence & transportation.

Depending on your point of view Trump’s America is either finally waking up to the importance of critical minerals and taking a realistic, strategic approach or it is only interested in the freedom of Ukraine to the extent it can exploit its resources. Either way today’s agreement does at least give the US some skin in the game of protecting what remains of free Ukrainian territory from Russian aggression.

There have been various assessments of the real mineral wealth that the US will be accessing. Some of the richest regions of Ukraine for rare earths are already under Russian occupation and much of what remains is dependent on Soviet era surveys which showed potential resources rather than proven reserves. Bloomberg’s Javier Blas and Sky’s Ed Conway have questioned some of Trump’s assertions about the rare earths he claims will deliver a multi-billion bonanza to the States. Want to know what rare earths actually are – the FT has provided a useful explainer.

Whatever your views of the political ramifications of this deal, it is one more step in a process by which the world’s mineral resources are increasingly being contested. The EU, the US, Canada and the UK have all variously deployed critical minerals strategies in the face of huge levels of Chinese dominance. They set out the aim of working together in a Minerals Security Partnership. As the Financial Times recently reported, these efforts have a long way to go. In Russia’s empire of African dictatorships supported by Wagner stolen assets and pillaged gold continue to drive out Western investment. In North West Africa it has added a new degree of risk to Western mining companies, accelerating a withdrawal that was already underway thanks to Chinese competition and increasing resource nationalism.

Meanwhile Middle Eastern investors from Saudi Arabia and Oman to the UAE are stepping up their interest in African assets, providing a new degree of competition for Western multinationals and Chinese, infrastructure backed deals. Ukraine’s resources are just one very symbolic element in a global scramble for resources the like of which the world has not seen in over a century.

In these circumstances, the proposed critical minerals interests of a London IPO candidate Metlen, highlighted this week in a Capital Markets Day at the London Stock exchange look particularly exciting and give some hope to those looking for a revival of the London market. Along with Rio Tinto’s emphatic rejection of an activist bid to leave the City and the emergence of domestic critical minerals plays, clustered in Cornwall and the Southwest, this could point to a revival of UK finance for and interest in the provision of critical minerals to the world. That could hardly be more timely.