The $9 Billion Loophole: America’s Backdoor into the Battery Supply Chain
The Orion Consortium’s $9 Billion Power Play in the DRC Signals a New Era of "Resource Realpolitik" for Western Automakers.
While the financial press was busy hyperventilating over the Trilogy Metals (NYSE: TMQ) deal last October, where a modest $35.6 million Pentagon investment sent the stock vertically into the stratosphere, a far more consequential game of chess was being played in the shadows. That game just ended with checkmate, or at least a very aggressive "check," in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Forget the Alaskan tundra for a moment. The real story is happening in the sweltering heat of the Lualaba province, where a U.S.-aligned consortium has just effectively bought its way into the VIP section of the world's most important copper party.
On February 3, Glencore (LSE: GLEN) quietly announced a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding to sell a 40 percent stake in its massive Mutanda and Kamoto copper-cobalt mines to the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium. The deal implies a valuation of roughly $9 billion for the assets. To put that in perspective, you could buy Trilogy Metals about twenty times over and still have change left for a fleet of mining trucks.

