1. The Situation: Washington moved from “diversify supply” rhetoric to explicit market-design this week: Vice President JD Vance publicly pitched a critical-minerals trading bloc with price floors (“Project Vault”) while the US simultaneously locked a foothold inside DRC copper/cobalt via a Washington-backed consortium buying into Glencore’s assets. In parallel, the Panama Canal port fight escalated from a legal ruling into an overt coercion contest after Beijing warned Panama of a “heavy price” and Panama’s president responded by insulating the judiciary as the decision-maker. Net effect: the rivalry just fused upstream minerals + downstream logistics chokepoints into a single pressure campaign against China-aligned commercial control. (Bloomberg, Semafor, CNBC, SCMP)

2. The Mechanism: - Price floors are a demand guarantee disguised as “fair trade.” They socialize downside risk for non-China producers/refiners, pulling projects through financing gates that otherwise fail under China-driven price volatility. This is industrial policy with a tradable wrapper. (Bloomberg, FT) - Equity-in-the-hole beats MOUs. The Orion consortium stake purchase in DRC converts US intent into enforceable cash-flow claims and board-level visibility—hard power inside a jurisdiction where “partnerships” usually die in permitting, security, and graft. (Semafor, MarketWatch) - Ports are the physical switching yards of sanctions and trade wars. Control doesn’t require sovereignty; it requires operational priority, data access, and denial options. Panama’s ruling threatens China’s ability to treat “commercial terminals” as dual-use influence nodes. (CNBC, FT) - The legal choke point becomes arbitration timescale. CK Hutchison can litigate or arbitrate for years; the US and Panama can reassign operations in weeks. The mismatch makes “rule of law” talk mostly irrelevant to outcome. (SCMP, AP) - Beijing’s incentive is deterrence, not Panama. The “heavy price” warning is meant to stop copycats (Darwin, other LATAM/African terminals) by raising expected retaliation cost for any state that touches China-linked concessions. (Bloomberg, SCMP) - Africa’s balance-sheet squeeze is the quiet lever. As African repayments to China now exceed new Chinese lending, Beijing’s influence shifts from “builder” to “collector,” creating openings for the US to buy access with targeted finance—but also making local leaders more extractionist and politically brittle. (Semafor, Semafor)

3. The State of Play: Reaction: The US is selling “Project Vault” as a technocratic fix for a “failing” minerals market—language designed to normalize cartel-like coordination while avoiding the word “subsidy.” Beijing is counter-messaging in legal/moral terms (“absurd,” “shameful”) on Panama, trying to paint US pressure as imperial meddling and Panama as captured. African civil society optics are already degrading: local narratives are hardening around “extraction 2.0,” now with an American flag. (Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, SCMP)

Strategy: The US is attempting a two-front envelopment: (1) lock non-China supply with guaranteed economics (price floors/stockpile/Ex-Im finance), and (2) deny China strategically placed logistics vantage points by weaponizing host-country courts and concession law. China’s counterplay will be selective retaliation plus acceleration of “control where it counts”: refining, trading, and offtake—areas where a mine stake doesn’t break Chinese pricing power. The real operational goal on both sides is not ownership; it’s priority access under stress (export controls, war, sanctions, shipping disruption). (FT, SCMP, CNBC)

4. Key Data: - $12B: announced US critical minerals stockpile / “Project Vault” scale. (FT) - 40%: Orion consortium buying 40% of Glencore’s stake in DRC copper/cobalt mines. (Semafor) - 50+ countries + EU: invited/engaged around the US critical minerals framework in Washington. (SCMP) - 25%: Guinea bauxite exports up 25% last year. (Semafor) - 74%: share of Guinea’s bauxite exports going to China. (Semafor)

5. What’s Next: Watch for the first enforceable “Project Vault” term sheet in the next 48–72 hours—specifically whether the US can secure a minimum-price/priority-offtake commitment that survives WTO-style scrutiny and private-sector bankability. In Panama, the forcing function is operational transition: any accelerated handoff, interim operator appointment, or arbitration filing milestone becomes the trigger for Beijing to choose between symbolic retaliation (tariffs/travel warnings) and targeted commercial punishment (shipping, finance, or specific firms). The tell will be whether China retaliates against Panama or against a third-country example to re-establish deterrence without giving Washington a clean bilateral escalation ladder.

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