Hello everyone, and welcome back to our weekly editorial on geopolitics, commodities, and macro.

While there hasn’t been much news on the commodity front since last week, we have a bunch of moving parts on the geopolitical scene—last Friday’s heated (and unplanned) Zelensky/Trump debate, the subsequent removal of all military aid targeting Ukraine, and now Trump trying his best to get all counterparts and allies to block any partnerships with China.

While this was already evident earlier this week, when the administration urged Mexico to impose tariffs on China to avoid US tariffs, today’s reports of Putin acting as the middleman in the Iran nuclear deal were not something anyone had on their bingo cards.

Putting political agendas and differing viewpoints aside, could it be that Trump is improving US-Russia relations to weaken China by pulling Russia further away from China? That would be in both Russia’s and the US’s interest, and it starts with US-Russian cooperation in the Middle East—where Trump has also increased the US’s presence to “help” Afghanistan develop its rare earth metal reserves.

Rare earth metals or increased border control seem to be the price of admission for a more favorable relationship with the US under Trump.