Can $100 Billion Tilt the Commodity Chessboard Back Toward the West?
How EXIM’s $100 Billion Shockwave Rewires the Global Race for Critical Minerals, Energy, and Strategic Influence
Editorial Team (ET)November 25, 2025
In a move that reads like Washington finally waking up from a two-decade nap, the US Export-Import Bank has thrown down a $100 billion gauntlet aimed squarely at Beijing and Moscow’s stranglehold on the raw materials that power everything from electric vehicles to fighter jets.
Speaking to the Financial Times on the eve of America’s return to “energy dominance,” newly minted EXIM chair John Jovanovic didn’t mince words: “We can’t do anything else that we’re trying to do without these underlying critical raw material supply chains being secure, stable and functioning.” Translation: no more begging hostile powers for the copper, uranium, and rare earths that keep the modern world running.
The opening salvos are already locked and loaded.
First up is a $4 billion natural-gas lifeline to Egypt courtesy of New York commodities house Hartree Partners, proving that energy security isn’t just about minerals, it’s about keeping allies’ lights on with American molecules. Next comes a $1.25 billion direct loan for Barrick Gold’s long-delayed, gargantuan Reko Diq copper-gold project in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. When fully ramped up, Reko Diq is expected to churn out 400,000 tonnes of copper a year, the kind of volume that makes Chinese smelters sweat.
