Lithium, Slavery & Deregulation
Confronting De-Industrialization
If there is anything I can say about the Trump Administration, it would help if they had some form of coherent messaging. Much of the turmoil in financial markets would have been more muted with better messaging.
First, let us start with some common factoids thrown about:
U.S. share of world population: 4%
U.S. share of world GDP: 26%
U.S. share of world wealth: 29%
U.S. share of world debt: 35%
U.S. share of worldwide military spending: 37%
U.S. share of worldwide foreign aid: 40%
This merely reveals how generous the United States has been helping the world. But now, Trump wants us to reassess the situation. After listening to Trump economic advisors Miran and Bessent as well Vivek Ramaswamy, I have a much better sense of what the approach is. The United States needs to defend critical industrial infrastructue as well as supply sources.
By now, you have heard about rare earth elements. The United States has these elements but heavy regulation impairs mining them. This graph from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/us-lithium-mines-map/ makes this clear regarding lithium. So why are we reliant on China for this element? Regulation and tariffs.
Very difficult to explain to many how lithium mining amounts to child slave labor (https://www.wardsauto.com/suppliers/forced-and-child-labor-abuses-found-in-75-of-lithium-battery-supply-chains). If you have mindless free trade, you end up enslaving children (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11572973/Harvard-professor-tells-Joe-Rogan-tech-devices-lithium-batteries-come-slave-mines.html and https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/Child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-car-batteries/).
Cobalt is another example.
China has been so sucessful in dominating cobalt mining, it forced Jarvis mining company, the only US based cobalt mine, to effectively shutdown (https://www.eenews.net/articles/biden-is-scrambling-for-minerals-this-u-s-cobalt-mine-just-closed/).
Imposing tariffs will shift critical industries back to the United States. However, at the same time, there apparently appears to be efforts to devalue the US dollar to expand US exports (https://mises.org/mises-wire/devaluing-us-dollar-how-make-america-poorer-again). The Trump tariffs appear to be an effort to lower the cost of borrowing funds (https://www.thestreet.com/investing/10-year-bond-auction-will-provide-key-test-to-trumps-tariff-strategy) but this has yet to materialize.
Elon Musk understands this. His companies know the value of being in the United States. And, he still working on making his products accessible to all. What stops him or any producer? Regulation. And he still working on buying local (https://cen.acs.org/energy/energy-storage-/Tesla-begins-making-lithium-chemicals/102/web/2024/12).
The entire chocolate industry is built on child slave labor too, especially (but not limited to plantations in Africa, where children are being kidnapped from nations outside the cocoa belt and sold to plantation owners).
The really insane thing about it is that these kids grow up in that system, then run away from the people enslaving them to start their own plantations and buy their own slaves and do it all the same way all over again. A lack of education and connections to companies and organizations trying to buy at reasonable rates is contributing to this. If the growers understood what their product was really worth and were incentivized to hire only adults (and held accountable by the local governments), this abuse would stop.
The big companies like Hersheys keep trying to hush it all up. When journalists go to investigate, they put their lives in serious danger.