The Northern Miner turns 110 this March and is looking pretty good for its age. Much better, for example, than cobalt, which is also the name of the Ontario town where the paper started. Changing battery technology and oversupply from the Democratic Republic of Congo has sunk the price of that mineral to 10-year lows now, even as rebel groups fracture the country’s east.
We have a story on it by our man in Africa, Henry Lazenby, which we could barely fit it in to the print issue for space. Too many ads. Another sign of health for the supercentenarian. (That’s what you call someone our age.)
But – showing how we’ve transformed over the decades from a black and white weekly – the story was on our website, mentioned in our podcast by host Adrian Pocobelli, primed for social media posting and is slated for a video when we interview an African security analyst at this year’s Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference, where you might be reading this right now. You’re at an event that, at age 93, is only slightly younger than we are.
PDAC is global in scope, drawing nearly 30,000 people a year. And we’re international, too, with our coverage while sister website Mining.com draws some 640,000 readers a month for the Northern Miner Group. Like mining, we’re truly global and it gets complicated at times. As when an Australian company with properties in Canada pushes a project in Greenland, an island administered by Danes perturbed that United States President Donald Trump wants to buy it.
Deals
Resource nationalism is the rage, of course, laid bare in the quid-pro-quo quest by the White House to secure Ukrainian minerals as a repayment of sorts for U.S. military spending.
Everything’s transactional, everything’s a deal, which could bode well for mining south of the border.
North of the border, it’s going to take more than winning a hockey tournament to quell Washington’s Frankenstein-like reanimation of 1840s manifest destiny. Then-president James Polk’s Mexican-American war led to the U.S. acquiring California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. Think of all the gold, copper, uranium and lithium those places hold. Canada has all those in abundance and more.
In contrast to today, Polk lowered U.S. tariffs. He supported agrarian economies that benefited from cheaper imports, and shifted from policies favouring northern U.S. manufacturers. Despite lower rates, increased trade meant higher overall tariff revenue. However, some American industries faced tougher foreign competition.
Free trade
In modern terms, Polk would appear somewhat bipartisan. He supported freer trade and a strong executive to push policy like a Roosevelt Democrat. Yet he advocated for states’ rights, a smaller federal government and less national infrastructure spending than Republicans had. His aggressive expansionism and military approach to securing territory echoes some conservative thinking. Adding to the volatile mix, he was also a pro-slavery Southerner.
Of course, free trade has traditionally been a conservative pillar even as its greatest impact has been lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, a heartfelt liberal ideal.
Just weeks before conservatives George H.W. Bush and Brian Mulroney signed Nafta, William F. Buckley Jr., America’s leading right-wing pundit for decades, quoted Winston Churchill on protectionists:
They watch the river flowing to the sea, and they wonder how long it will be before the land is parched and drained of all its water, they do not observe the fertilizing showers by which in the marvellous economy of nature, the water is restored to the land.
“The United States would grow stronger if we devoted ourselves to removing existing restraints on trade, rather than adding to their number,” Buckley said on an edition of his TV show “Firing Line.”
More recently, conservative satirist P.J. O’Rourke put it differently:
There is no such thing as a trade deficit. It doesn’t matter if America imports all its goods from China and exports nothing but pieces of paper. The Americans want the iPad and the Chinese want the handsome portraits of Benjamin Franklin. This is free trade.
Concerns over trade rule the headlines these days. March 4 looms large in North America as the date for the U.S. to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, although oil, gas and critical minerals get a break at 10%. Steel and aluminum companies are bracing for their own 25% rates on March 12.
Red tape
The price of gold flutters to record highs near $3,000 an oz. because of economic uncertainty and geopolitical tension, not because the Trump administration is slashing red tape for the mining industry. The extra income from the higher metal price may help gold companies drill more to replace reserves.
But it’s too early to determine if attempts to gut the U.S. federal bureaucracy will axe the very officials needed to approve mines and funding from the departments of energy and defence. They even funnel tens of millions of dollars to Canadian projects. Battery metal producers and project developers can’t be thrilled about rollbacks in pollution standards and electric vehicle incentives.
Cross-border issues are nothing new for the Miner. In 1915, Canada had high tariffs on imported mining equipment, particularly from the U.S. The war economy led to increased demand for metals like nickel, copper and zinc, but also created export restrictions. High British import duties on refined silver discouraged Canadian smelters and prompted Cobalt’s prolific miners to ship raw ore to U.S. operations.
One-hundred and 10 years later, Northern Miner Group staff, now from British Columbia to Nova Scotia with contributors in Europe and Australia, continues to cover the industry.
The good news so far this year is that the S&P/TSX Global Mining Index has increased 7.7%. Despite the threat of tariffs and inflation, the S&P 500 has gained about 4% and the TSX is up about 3%.
Things are looking good, and so are we, for our age.
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