Welcome again to World Temporary, the place we’re trying on the White Home’s new important minerals accomplice, the primary main take a look at of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal, and a rising feud between Colombia and the United States.
Securing Provide Chains
On Monday, Australia joined a rising listing of nations that U.S. President Donald Trump has secured important minerals offers with in an effort to counter China’s close to monopoly on provide chains. The settlement, signed throughout Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s go to to the White Home, concludes months of negotiations and might be used as a future bargaining chip for Australia in bilateral commerce relations and protection cooperation.
Below the deal, the U.S. and Australian governments will make investments greater than $3 billion in important mineral tasks within the subsequent six months, together with within the constructing of a complicated gallium refinery in Western Australia with a capability of 100 metric tons per 12 months. The recoverable assets in these tasks are estimated to be value $53 billion, the White Home stated.
“In a few 12 months from now, we’ll have a lot important mineral and uncommon earths that you just gained’t know what to do with them,” Trump stated on Monday.
China maintains a chokehold on the world’s rare-earth provide chains, accounting for round 85 p.c of processing and 92 p.c of magnet manufacturing. Beijing notably dominates within the heavy uncommon earths that underpin a lot of the U.S. navy’s weapons arsenal. Uncommon earths and demanding minerals “have emerged because the Achilles’s heel of the U.S. within the U.S.-China commerce discussions,” Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes, a former U.S. Power Division deputy director for batteries and demanding minerals, instructed FP’s Christina Lu in July.
Nonetheless, Australia maintains a considerable provide. Australia is wealthy in lithium, cobalt, tungsten, and different minerals which can be important in expertise improvement and inexperienced vitality. The White Home is subsequently hoping to make use of Canberra’s assets to scale back U.S. reliance on China.
Simply final week, Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese language items beginning Nov. 1 after Beijing restricted the export of such minerals earlier this month. In an analogous vein, Albanese’s authorities has additionally tried to diversify its export market away from Beijing, at the same time as China stays Canberra’s greatest commerce accomplice, with the latter’s economic system reliant on iron ore and coal shipments to China.
However Trump and Albanese usually are not simply counting on a brand new important minerals deal to compete with China. On Monday, the 2 leaders additionally mentioned higher protection cooperation, together with strengthening the so-called AUKUS trilateral nuclear submarine deal involving Australia, the USA, and the UK. That deal, valued at almost $240 billion, would see Australia buy U.S. nuclear-powered submarines in 2032 after which construct a brand new submarine class with the UK.
It’s unclear whether or not this new important minerals deal and additional navy collaboration will persuade Trump to scale back U.S. tariffs on Australia. Presently, Washington imposes a ten p.c baseline tariff on most Australian imports; a 50 p.c tariff on Australian metal and aluminum; a 50 p.c tariff on some copper and merchandise containing copper; a 25 p.c tariff on auto components; a 25 p.c tariff on upholstered picket merchandise, kitchen cupboards, and vanities; and a ten p.c tariff on softwood timber and lumber.
Right now’s Most Learn
The World This Week
Tuesday, Oct. 21: Japan holds a parliamentary vote to pick out the nation’s subsequent prime minister.
U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance begins a three-day journey to Israel.
Wednesday, Oct. 22: European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa host Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for the primary EU-Egypt summit.
Thursday, Oct. 23: The European Council holds a leaders’ summit in Brussels.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva begins a two-day journey to Indonesia earlier than heading to Malaysia.
Friday, Oct. 24: French lawmakers start debating the 2026 price range.
Eire holds a presidential election.
Saturday, Oct. 25: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese language Vice Premier He Lifeng meet in Malaysia.
Sunday, Oct. 26: Malaysia hosts the forty seventh Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit.
Argentina holds midterm elections.
Monday, Oct. 27: Trump begins a three-day journey to Japan after attending the ASEAN summit.
What We’re Following
Shaky truce. The delicate cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas confronted its first main take a look at on Sunday, when Israel stated Hamas militants launched an anti-tank missile and killed two Israeli troopers close to the southern Gaza metropolis of Rafah. The assault prompted a wave of Israeli airstrikes that killed a minimum of 26 Palestinians, and it propelled Israel to droop humanitarian help deliveries into the territory. Help deliveries into Gaza had been set to renew on Monday.
Hamas’s armed department has denied any involvement within the Rafah assault, sustaining that it stays dedicated to the cease-fire. And the Israeli navy has vowed to proceed implementing the truce deal, including that it’ll “reply forcefully to any violation of the settlement.”
On Sunday, Trump accused Hamas of being “fairly rambunctious” however steered that maybe the Hamas management wasn’t concerned within the assault. The U.S. president stopped wanting weighing in on whether or not he thought the Israeli strikes had been justified, although.
In accordance with one senior Egyptian official, negotiators are working “round the clock” to de-escalate the scenario, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White Home envoy Steve Witkoff met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Vance can also be anticipated to satisfy with Netanyahu throughout the vice chairman’s upcoming go to to Israel.
U.S.-Colombia feud. Colombia recalled its ambassador to the USA on Monday after Trump threatened the day earlier than to impose new tariffs on and lower off help to Bogotá. The U.S. president additionally warned on Sunday that if Colombian President Gustavo Petro doesn’t take steps to fight alleged drug trafficking within the nation, then Washington would do it itself, “and it gained’t be finished properly.” On Monday, Colombian Inside Minister Armando Benedetti referred to as these remarks “a risk of invasion or navy motion towards Colombia.”
Colombia and the USA have had a rocky relationship underneath Trump, butting heads on immigration, commerce, and drug trafficking. However the two international locations’ feud reached new heights over the weekend, when the U.S. navy introduced that it had struck a vessel that it claims was related to Colombia’s left-wing Nationwide Liberation Military insurgent group.
With out offering proof, the Trump administration stated that the boat was getting used for drug shipments. (In latest weeks, the USA has additionally focused Venezuelan boats over comparable allegations.) However Petro has accused U.S. forces of killing an harmless fisherman onboard. “U.S. authorities officers have dedicated a homicide and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote on X.
Upending the established order. Centrist Sen. Rodrigo Paz gained Bolivia’s presidential election runoff on Sunday, prompting the top of almost 20 years of leftist rule underneath the Motion for Socialism celebration. Paz secured 54.5 p.c of the vote, in keeping with preliminary outcomes, defeating conservative rival Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga’s 45.5 p.c.
“We should open Bolivia to the world,” Paz stated on Sunday in his victory speech. Paz campaigned on ending the nation’s worst financial disaster in a long time; he has proposed reforming Bolivia’s financial mannequin to a extra free-market type by phasing out gas subsidies, ending the nation’s mounted change fee, and selling personal sector funding. Rural voters appeared to favor Paz’s platform over Quiroga’s austerity measures, which included an Worldwide Financial Fund bailout.
Paz’s Christian Democratic Social gathering doesn’t maintain a majority in Bolivia’s Legislative Meeting, although, which means that the president-elect will now need to kind a coalition to control. Paz will take workplace on Nov. 8.
Odds and Ends
Mona Lisa isn’t smiling. In a brazen heist on the world’s largest artwork museum, a minimum of 4 burglars broke into the second-floor home windows of Paris’s Louvre Museum and stole eight gadgets as soon as belonging to French royalty or imperial rulers, together with the tiara of Empress Eugénie, the spouse of Napoleon III. In a sequence of calculated strikes that might make Danny Ocean proud, the theft took not more than seven minutes, marking what some specialists counsel would be the costliest theft ever staged on the French museum.
