China’s Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd sees unprecedented global uncertainties on the critical and precious metals markets amid rising protectionism and trade barriers, the biggest Chinese and the world’s largest metals miner in terms of market value said on Wednesday.
Zijin Mining, which is now the third top valued metals miner behind Rio Tinto and BHP, flagged in its half-year earnings report that “Geopolitical risks are increasingly severe, and regional conflicts are spreading globally. Global uncertainties have become unprecedented.”
Following the tariff and trade war initiated by the United States, “The global political and economic orders established since World War II are facing comprehensive challenges.”
Against this backdrop, the competition for critical minerals among major powers “has entered a high-intensity confrontation phase,” Zijin Mining said, warning that the changing global order may impact the prices of metals and critical minerals and affect the company’s revenue, profits, and new overseas projects.
“Differences in politics, policies and laws among various countries and regions, as well as resource nationalism sentiments, may pose certain challenges to construction and production operations,” said the Chinese metals miner, which generates most of its revenues and profit from gold and copper.
In the copper market, Zijin Mining expects wide fluctuation in prices due to the U.S. copper tariffs, while Chinese demand remains resilient amid infrastructure investment growth and the long-term structural supply gap in refined copper.
The attractiveness of gold as an asset has increased due to global trade uncertainties, a weak U.S. dollar, and high levels of gold purchases from central banks, Zijin said.
In the lithium market, it will still take time to achieve a clearing of the oversupply, the Chinese company said.
The heavily concentrated supply of critical minerals in a handful of countries and China’s export controls are raising the risk of “painful disruptions” in the market, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in May in its annual report, Global Critical Minerals Outlook.
Despite major deals and government support in the West for building domestic supply chains, China has raised its market share over the past few years, the IEA’s report found.