2026-03-02
9 分钟Hello, Mike Bird here, co-host of Money Talks,
our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an article from the latest edition of The Economist,
which we very much hope you'll enjoy.
In 1973,
a club of Arab petrostates held the world to ransom by halting crude oil exports to countries they accused of supporting Israel.
Petrol prices soared.
Western economies buckled.
Today, the danger is that China will use its grip on other natural resources to achieve its aims,
such as seizing Taiwan.
It has already shown its power by choking off exports of rare earth metals last year.
That is why America is staging its biggest intervention in commodity markets in decades.
The battleground is the supply of critical metals,
a group of minerals vital to making military electrical and computing infrastructure,
everything modern economies need to be safe, high-tech and green.
China supplies most of these.
It mines about 80% of the world's tungsten, for instance, and refines 99% of its gallium.
This is spurring America into an all-out campaign to diversify its sourcing of 60 minerals.
It has pledged billions of dollars to dozens of mining projects, at home and abroad.