Almonty Industries is positioning itself to "become the leading Western producer of tungsten," potentially as early as 2027, as Western buyers confront a severe supply shortage sparked by China and, more broadly, what we've described as "resource nationalism."
Bloomberg reports that Almonty has partnered with Rwanda's government, securing a foothold in Africa's largest tungsten-producing nation. The deal aims to accelerate access to existing production and develop a traceable, conflict-free supply chain for Western governments, reducing dependence on China's quasi-monopolistic market position on not just tungsten but rare earths.
Under a binding agreement disclosed early Monday, Rwanda will receive a 25% stake in Almonty's local subsidiary in exchange for an exploration concession and a processing license. The Dillon, Montana-based miner will retain a 75% stake.
Almonty's strategy to partner with Rwanda, as described by Bloomberg's James Attwood, targets one of the West's most pressing problems in its race to secure critical materials: new mines take years to build, while supplies are desperately needed.
Attwood explained:
Rather than waiting years for a new mine to be developed, the partnership plans to begin acquiring ore, pre-concentrate and panning tailings from existing licensed Rwandan producers, including small-scale miners. That material can initially be sold, upgraded or exported while the partners work toward building a permanent collection and processing facility in Rwanda.
CEO Lewis Black told Attwood in an exclusive interview that the Rwanda deal is the quickest and most viable solution to boost tungsten supply for the West, as new mines take years to develop and partnering with existing producers can deliver supplies more quickly.
"Traders can play with the pirates," Black said. "We're only interested in licensed domestic output."
Black said the US government helped structure the deal but is not funding the new venture. Tungsten will be shipped to customers in the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea, he added.
The US government's involvement in the deal only suggests the urgency by the Trump administration to identify leading tungsten companies, such as Almonty, to quickly come up with solutions as China chokes the world of this critical material that underpins defense production, semiconductor manufacturing, AI data center buildouts, power grid upgrades and industrial tooling.
Black also noted that the new venture plans to deploy a mobile processing unit near existing tailings dams and explore the roughly 12-square-mile Shyorongi concession. The deal boosts near-term supplies for Almonty while simultaneously developing a larger domestic processing and production base.
Back said the deal with Africa's largest tungsten producer and ranked seventh globally in 2025 serves as a blueprint for other countries where small-scale tungsten mining is practiced and it only seems like Almonty can take this blueprint and begin building out a rapid sourcing network of tungsten and become the early leader in deliverable tungsten on an ex-China basis.
For Almonty, the deal expands its existing network, which includes a major mine ramping up in South Korea, operations in Portugal and projects in Spain and the US.
Almonty began processing ore at its crown jewel, the Sangdong mine in South Korea, in June, marking its transition to scalable tungsten ore production, with throughput potentially increasing to 1.2 million tons of tungsten ore in 2027.
In July, Almonty expanded its agreement with Pennsylvania-based Global Tungsten & Powders, extending the term to 21 years, increasing total contracted volumes by 40% and improving pricing by approximately 6.3%. This establishes a direct route into US industrial and defense supply chains.
Almonty's most recent presentation describes itself as becoming the leading Western tungsten producer following Sangdong's Phase II expansion and an extension at Portugal's operating Panasqueira mine.
Almonty is pursuing that higher-value processing opportunity through a planned South Korean tungsten oxide plant with an initial annual capacity of 4,000 tons, then expanding to 6,000 tons.
Companies that can bring supply online sooner could capture a crucial early market advantage, including Almonty as it ramps up tungsten production in South Korea.
And that's why Jefferies initiated coverage earlier this month.
Jefferies initiates critical mineral companies Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance with Buy; the firms are expected to benefit from increased demand for supply outside of China.
Almonty (buy, PT $26.25)
Sees Almonty offering public exposure to Western tungsten…
Across the tungsten industry over the last several weeks, there have been troubling developments of "resource nationalism":
Last week, at the Jefferies Industrials Conference, MSC Industrial executive Martina McIsaac warned of a tungsten supply shock rippling through the company's supply chain and continuing to drive up industrial tooling costs.
China's near-total control of the tungsten market ...
... which Beijing's February 2025 export-licensing requirements intensified the global shortage, contributing to a 70% decline in Chinese exports of ammonium paratungstate, or APT, through the first 11 months of 2025, according to Katusa analysts.
Rotterdam APT prices jumped from around $390 per metric ton unit at the beginning of 2025 to roughly $3,400 this spring, according to Katusa Research.
The shortage has spooked Wall Street, as mentions of "tungsten" on earnings calls have soared.
Black said, "Better lucky than smart. Only need to be right once."
The advantage today belongs to producers that can turn deals into verified and conflict-free deliverable tungsten. In a market defined by scarcity, as former Goldman commodities head Jeff Currie has warned, early movers that deliver reliable supplies to the West will earn Wall Street's recognition. That recognition could grow in the months ahead as the decoupling between China and the West accelerates.
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 08:05Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity News,
The Bank of England has spent more than £85,000 of research money to justify wiping Winston Churchill, Jane Austen, J.M.W. Turner and Alan Turing off Britain's banknotes and swapping them for hedgehogs, foxes and puffins.
A Freedom of Information trail shows Savanta was paid £49,000 to run focus groups that told officials historical figures were "elitist and divisive."
Another £22,500 went on public consultations about which animals should replace them. The Bank called the result a "positive evolution," not censorship.
Bank of England spent £85,000 on research to justify dropping Winston Churchill and other British heroes from banknotes https://t.co/gtu6zPAEZ5
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) September 12, 2026The October 2025 Savanta report, delivered months before the nature theme was announced, warned that portraits of notable Britons were "contentious and not representative of the UK's cultural and natural diversity."
Officials were told historical figures represented "a backward-looking vision of the UK that carries too great a risk of division and controversy."
Most of the 119 focus-group participants said featuring such people was "potentially divisive, elitist and disconnected from their own experiences."
Churchill sits on the current £5. Austen is on the £10, Turner on the £20, Turing on the £50. All are scheduled to go. King Charles stays on the front.
Governor Andrew Bailey is due to pick the animals by the end of 2026 from a shortlist that includes the European hedgehog, red fox, Atlantic puffin, barn owl, common frog and bottlenose dolphin.
What the fuck does a dolphin have to do with the history of Great Britain?
The Bank insists the driver was an earlier consultation of 44,000 responses in which nature came top, plus the need for new anti-counterfeit features. Chief cashier Victoria Cleland said: "The key driver for introducing a new banknote series is always to increase counterfeit resilience, but it also provides an opportunity to celebrate different aspects of the UK.
Nature is a great choice from a banknote-authentication perspective and means we can showcase the UK's rich and varied wildlife."
Critics were not buying the security alibi. Reform UK's Nigel Farage called the plan "absolutely crackers." Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said it was "erasing our history" and "a silly thing to do." Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Churchill "deserves better than being replaced by a badger."
The same Whitehall that now treats Churchill as a liability was simultaneously lobbying for something even more ideological. Cabinet Office officials from the Office for Equality and Opportunity wrote to the Bank's chief cashier arguing that current figures gave an "incomplete picture" of British identity. They wanted "greater representation of women, disabled people, ethnic minority communities and LGBT+ individuals" to "send a strong signal of progress and recognition."
Imagine that set of banknotes.
Shadow minister Alex Burghart said government officials had been "caught red-handed conspiring with the Bank of England to remove them from our banknotes." Banknotes, he added, "should feature the greatest Britons - the historic figures that unite our country. They shouldn't be chosen on the basis of Labour's equality laws."
This is not an isolated design tweak. It sits inside a years-long campaign against British history and culture.
In June 2020, Churchill's Parliament Square statue, the Washington statue and the Cenotaph were boarded up as Black Lives Matter riots rolled through London. A petition demanded the box come off. It was treated as a victory for the mob that wanted the bronze gone.
The statue has been defaced again since, including with pro-Palestine slogans in 2026. The pattern is the same: protect the monument from the crowd by hiding it, then treat the hidden monument as proof that the figure himself is the problem.
Now the United Nations has joined the lecture. A UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination guidance tells former slaving states that "public spaces should honour the contributions of people of African descent."
It wants statues, memorials, rewritten schoolbooks and "reparatory justice." Historian Matt Goodwin's response was two words: "jog on." Professor Robert Tombs called the campaign "sinister" and "a huge financial and political scam."
While Churchill is priced off the currency, Sadiq Khan's Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has been given over to Tschabalala Self's five-metre Lady in Blue: an overweight black woman in a tight dress and heels, billed as an "everywoman" and "a symbol of confidence and purpose."
Self said she is "not an idol to venerate or a historic figurehead to commemorate." City Hall called it an excellent addition. Large parts of the public called it an eyesore bolted onto the square that holds Nelson atop his column.
So let's recap. They boxed up the county's greatest leader. Commissioned consultants to declare him elitist and divisive. Lobbied for identity-group replacements. Installed a cartoon figure next to Nelson. Invited the UN to demand African statues as atonement. Then they spent £85,000 proving that a hedgehog is less "divisive" than the man who kept the country free from Nazi rule.
God help us.
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Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 07:45The biggest problem with the "short-terming" of the US Treasury stock, which under Bessent's extension of Yellen's Activist Treasury Issuance playbook, which pushed the percentage of T-Bills as a percentage of total debt to 23% - the highest since 2010 excluding the emergency surge during the covid crisis which relied entirely on Bills for government funding and briefly pushed the Bill percentage above 25% - even as total US debt rose above $40 trillion for the first time ever...
... is that any rate hike will immediately increase the amount the country is spending on interest.
Which is especially concerning because, as we wrote on Friday when discussing the August budget deficit, gross US interest (for the LTM period) is now a record $1.4 trillion and is set to surpass Social Security as the largest US outlay within 2 years, likely hitting $2 trillion before 2030.
The dramatic deterioration in the US fiscal picture prompted BofA's chief economist Aditya Bhave to pen a report ("In the interest of time", available to pro subs) in which he wrote that "the recent rise in interest rates, particularly at the long-end, coupled with US total debt crossing the $40tn threshold sparked a wave of commentary on the US fiscal picture."
According to Bhave, while elevated deficits since the pandemic have certainly contributed to the higher term premium, it’s unlikely that crossing the $40tn threshold contributed to the recent increase in long-term yields. That's because markets tend to respond to changes in the expected path of deficits and Treasury issuance rather than the level of debt alone. Importantly, there has been no policy announcement or fiscal development that meaningfully altered those expectations recently.
Instead, BofA notes, it appears that the recent rise in yields has been driven by higher inflation expectations owing to the rise in energy prices and questions over the Fed’s commitment to its price stability mandate, which were partially quieted by Warsh at Jackson Hole.
Regardless of what has driven the rise in yields, the BofA economist team cautions that higher interest rates across the curve do warrant a renewed focus on deficits. The deficit this year is on pace to once again eclipse 6% of GDP and a major reason for that is rising interest expense which has exceed spending on Defense and Medicare. The trend in interest costs is also notably worse than Medicare, Defense Spending and even Social Security, which have been more stable.
Source: BofAAnd while the trend of US interest expense growth is already ruinous, here BofA repeats what we said above, namely that the current level of interest rates is likely to exacerbate these trends as Treasury refinances maturing debt at higher borrowing costs.
According to BofA calcs, the average interest rate on outstanding marketable Treasury debt remains well below prevailing market yields, at roughly 3.4%. Looking specifically at coupon-bearing securities, current market rates imply that debt rolled over in coming years will be refinanced at interest rates approximately 1.4 percentage points higher, on average, than those on the securities being retired.
Source: BofAMost importantly, and this is what we started the post with, is that the Treasury's increased reliance on bills also leaves borrowing costs more sensitive to near-term monetary policy. As Bhave writes, nearly $7 trillion of Treasury bills are currently outstanding, the vast majority of which mature within one year.
Source: BofAAssuming the Fed hikes rates by 75bp this year as BofA expects (once this week, and two more times before the latest Fed Hiking cycle ends), BofA concludes that annual interest costs on outstanding T-bills could increase by roughly $50bn or ~15bps of GDP.
It gets worse.
As a reminder of the pernicious nature of compounding debt, in addition to higher refinancing costs on the horizon, BofA warns that a more fundamental concern is the feedback loop between interest rates and debt. Ultimately, debt sustainability depends not only on the level of interest rates, but also on how those rates compare with nominal GDP growth. When nominal growth exceed borrowing costs, debt-to-GDP ratios can stabilize over time. However, as the gap between interest rates and nominal growth narrows, higher debt levels become increasingly difficult to sustain.
The risk is that the self-reinforcing dynamic between interest costs and deficits can further narrow that gap over time.
Meanwhile, there is a feedback loop between higher interest costs and deficits that we must account for. Higher interest costs increase deficits and Treasury borrowing needs, which in turn result in even more interest expense. Increased Treasury issuance can put upward pressure on term premiums as investors demand greater compensation to absorb a larger supply of duration. Higher term premiums raise borrowing costs, which further increase interest expense and deficits, creating a self-reinforcing dynamic.
Obviously, the risk from this dynamic is not immediate, which only makes it worse as generations of politicians can sweep it under the rug (dealing with unsustainable spending and debt is not only unpleasant, it is a career killer for politicians), until it becomes to late to deal with it and the problem explodes. Sure enough, this dynamic emerges only gradually as a larger share of the debt stock is refinanced at higher rates and interest expense consumes an increasing share of federal spending. To illustrate this, BofA simulates debt-to-GDP trajectories under three scenarios for how interest rates respond to higher debt.
Source: BofAIn the low, central, and high scenarios, a 1 percentage point increase in the debt-to- GDP ratio raises interest rates by 1bp, 2bp, and 3bp, respectively. While the effects are modest initially, the trajectories diverge meaningfully over longer horizons as higher debt levels lead to higher borrowing costs, which further accelerate debt accumulation.
The composition of deficits matters
The growing share of deficits attributable to interest costs has important implications for both the economy and financial markets. That's because deficits driven by rising interest expense provide far less support to economic activity than deficits associated with tax relief or government spending, and are far less defensively politically. In addition, they may crowd out both public and private investment by placing sustained upward pressure on long-term interest rates. Over time, they constrain the government's ability to provide fiscal support during economic downturns, potentially slowing the pace of recovery and resulting in a full-blown fiscal crisis.
For markets, the changing composition of deficits matters because it can lead to greater Treasury issuance without a corresponding boost to economic growth. As a result, it may place additional upward pressure on Treasury supply, term premiums, and ultimately the long end of the yield curve.
To see this in practice, look no further than interest rates on the long-end of the Treasury curve... but not just in the US - anywhere else too.
In conclusion, nobody wins from adding another $50 billion of interest cost to the country (except for America's short-term creditors of course). As Peter Tchir wrote earlier, with interest expense already an issue relative to defense or discretionary spending, a rate hike does not help on that front.
Putting it together, the Academy Securities trader wrote that he finds it "difficult to imagine President Trump liking the idea, even if it helps the longer end of the yield curve, or that stocks have priced it in."
Of course they haven't, but stocks remain hypnotized in an AI-bubble, which ironically is kept afloat only thanks to record debt issuance (now that capex is funded largely from new debt), which will come to a crashing halt once Treasury yields spike and the credit market slams shut once. And as always happens, all of these things will take place all at once triggering the next Fed bailout of, well, everything.
More in the full BofA note available to pro subscribers
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:55Authored by Mark Nayler via FEE,
After another summer of heatwaves and wildfires, Spain is petitioning the EU to create a climate adaptation fund. In a letter sent to the EU's climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the Spanish minister for the ecological transition Sara Aagesen Muñoz said that Europe needs a blanket strategy to help its member states cope with climate change, and to mobilize the "resources needed to deliver the necessary investments." The mobilizing strategy favored by Muñoz is a permanent windfall tax on energy companies, many of which have cashed in on higher gas and oil prices resulting from the wars in Ukraine and Iran. She also recommends more mutual debt financing, similar to the (supposedly one-off) Next Generation EU scheme introduced to help member states recover from the pandemic - an unpopular idea that is unlikely to be a feature of the EU's next seven-year budget.
It wouldn't be the first time that the EU has taxed exceptional profits. In 2022, in reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Brussels imposed a minimum levy of 33% on fossil fuel companies' surplus profits, defined as being 20% above their annual averages from 2018 (this in itself highlighted one problem with windfall taxes - namely, defining "surplus" profit). So far, however, the EU has resisted reintroducing what Meg O'Neill, the CEO of BP, calls a "highly flawed response to the situation", instead pointing out that individual countries can introduce their own windfall taxes. Last month, Portugal imposed a tax of 33% on oil companies benefiting from the Iran war, saying that it was "both fair and necessary to create a solidarity mechanism."
The fairness of windfall taxes, of course, is one of the most questionable things about them. As the Portuguese finance ministry said when introducing its windfall levy, the elevated profits of oil and gas providers this year have resulted "solely from external market conditions." So why punish them? Advocates of an EU-wide windfall tax base their argument on this fact; but precisely the same circumstance provides a compelling reason to oppose them.
On this view, such taxes penalize oil and gas companies for benefiting from the operation of neutral market forces. These companies are also, of course, susceptible to market downturns - so one might expect to see them compensated by the state in hard times as well as heavily taxed during booms. That they are never compensated in this way suggests that windfall levies aren't really about fairness. One suspects that many of their advocates want to punish energy companies, even when their extraordinary profits have been achieved without subterfuge, corruption, or creative bookkeeping. Proponents of windfall taxes also tend to assume that the resulting money would be better invested by governments than private entities. But as several controversies around the Next Gen EU scheme have reminded us, that is not a given.
Muñoz's letter to the EU's climate ministry comes less than a month after several EU member states put the idea of a EU-wide windfall tax to Ireland, which currently holds the six-month, rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and Austria are requesting that the presidency puts this idea on the agenda at the next meeting of EU finance ministers, due in Dublin on September 18 - 19. Echoing Muñoz's call, they said that the EU needs a "common approach, one that ensures that those who are profiting from the crisis do their part to ease the burden on the general public."
This is another questionable assumption - that an EU-wide tax on energy providers would transubstantiate into lower prices for consumers. But in some countries, it might have the opposite effect: as with Trumpian tariffs, higher operating costs could simply be passed on to customers. Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, has already warned that the company's price caps of €1.99 ($2.30) and €2.25 ($2.60) for petrol and diesel, respectively - introduced in March and so far estimated to have cost the company around €200 million ($233 million) - would be scrapped if the French government imposed a windfall tax on profits connected with the Iran war.
Windfall taxes also create an unstable regulatory environment, which in turn can dramatically reduce share values. In July 2022, when Spain's Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez announced a one-off "solidarity" tax on Spain's biggest banks, Spanish-listed banking groups slumped by €5 billion ($5.8 billion; along with fossil fuel companies, banks are the most common target of morally-motivated windfall taxes). This "temporary" tax, which now operates on a sliding scale, has been rolled over until at least next year, highlighting another problem - that windfall levies often stick around well past their stipulated deadlines. The longer they exist, the less attractive the affected companies become to investors.
This was the main reason why ExxonMobil sued the EU over its "solidarity" tax in 2022, a year in which the American energy giant's third quarter profits hit almost $20 billion, the largest it had ever posted and triple those of the previous year ("more money than God," as then-US President Joe Biden put it). Filed through its Dutch and German subsidiaries at Luxembourg's general court, ExxonMobil's complaint stated that Brussels's windfall tax would "undermine investor confidence, discourage investment, and increase reliance on imported energy and fuel products." The case has yet to be resolved - but European courts would surely see many more like it if Spain's recommendations are acted on.
The most devastating criticism of Spain's proposal of a permanent windfall tax to combat climate change, however, is that it would be utterly self-defeating. It will cost an estimated €27 trillion ($31 trillion) for the EU to reach its 2050 climate neutrality goals, with the majority of that capital expected to come from the private sector. According to the European Central Bank: "Public policies should aim to remove structural rigidities, improve regulatory and administrative efficiency and foster green innovation." The EU's recent deregulation drive has those aims in mind; but a windfall tax on energy companies - especially if it remained in place for years, as Muñoz recommends - would have the opposite effect, by restricting the private sector's ability to invest. Oil and gas companies are going to need more money than God to help facilitate the green transition.
In its focus on long-term prevention, rather than short-term reaction, the EU's new wildfire strategy shows the direction in which the bloc should be heading with its climate policies. Punishing companies that have profited from geopolitical turmoil might cater to public anger at their windfalls; but in the long run it won't benefit consumers, nor will it help Europe reach its climate goals. To realize those, the EU needs to work with its biggest energy companies, not against them.
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/14/2026 - 06:30