VIDEO - Andrew Miller: Lithium Industry Needs More Capital to Support Demand

Andrew Miller’s comments are euphemistic, diplomatic, indeed tactile. The current lithium marketplace is a global show, where West is colliding with East. The entire EV emergence is pitted against ... well China. The long-term contracts by the oligarchic producers are representative of protective measures taken by Titan Fiefdoms. The unified colossal Chinese power focused on State-determined 5-year plans ... well, such powerful forces are comparatively non-existent outside China. The EV market is now entirely Chinese controlled. Battery production, the consumer of end-of-chain elements inputs, is what determines lithium & cobalt prices. Without the kind of open & cooperative lithium trade forum being proposed by the LME, this China-controlled industry will continue. Consumer-age colonisation & conquest is complete now. The market has seen this. So have I. I am pulling the plug as a retail equity investor, as there is less incentive to put money into a clearly-manipulated commodity that will get even more controlled from now on. Game over. China has secured the EV future. The remainder of the world will now squabble over & compete for the remaining battery inputs. Good luck Volkswagen & Northvolt! Good luck GM, Ford. Good luck Panasonic & Honda, Korea, etc. where will you get your inputs when China is approaching 3 million vehicles/year manufacturing levels, with cheaper well-made vehicles composed of China/JV-acquired intellectual property & cheap labour? This cannot end well for everyone, unless China runs the show! A global economy that still finds the “little guy” able to compete, MIGHT happen if such technologies as fusion or hydrogen energy can get stablished before being bought-out or seized & controlled by China’s multiplicity of government investment corporations. How can free-market lithium pricing exist in a free enterprise, capitalist economy, when the profoundly major influencing factor (China) doesn’t operate adherent to such finance, economic & trade paradigms? If each Nation State decided to build batteries for electric cars, then subsidise them, then have really cheap labour inputs to boot, there is NO WAY the could ever compete against this Chinese EV machine. Nobody in the West has ever fully considered yielding individual rights & choices to a hegemonic central planning government probably since German leadership several decades ago. Today, such a powerful force is aided by tightly-harnessed artificial intelligence, information technology, emerging Blockchain & 5G internet. The next Lithium forum MAY well transpire in Beijing. Who will not be present? Game over Andrew...