Critical Mineral Exploration Enters Wild West Phase Under Trump’s Resource Push

It’s the Wild West (for critical mineral exploration)

The segment’s title references two things.

1. I’ve always said that “investing” in junior/exploration mining stocks listed on the TSX-V is like the wild west, with adventure, profit and bust out failure all in play, and…
2. Literally, the U.S. based minerals/resources stocks are mostly operating in the west, including Alaska, and some like Talon Metals, in the northern mid-west. Canada is more distributed East to West, with British Columbia and the Yukon being mining havens.

Let’s focus on U.S. stocks, given the Trump admin’s (in my opinion, right minded ) desire to invest in the mineral resources sector. You can (and I do) say a lot of negatives about the guy and some of the clowns he has appointed to the administration, but he is somehow smart enough to surround himself with sharp economic people (IMO) who know what they are doing, in some cases.

The team advising Trump on strategic acquisitions (which began with the DoD’s investment in MP Materials) is in my opinion doing exactly what should be done in a world of unfair trade balances, set up by the greed on Wall Street, goring out America’s manufacturing base (I was there dealing with it, automating to survive it, remember), putting U.S. manufacturing on its knees, impairing mining and other “dirty” jobs in service to King Dollar and the mighty U.S. consumerist/services economy. It was all finance, baby.

You don’t need me to go on about the real manufacturing that went on back then (beginning in the “trickle down” 1980s that did not trickle). We as a greedy nation led by the Wall Street/Washington alliance, outsourced it all and manufactured a massive and sprawling rust belt while financially backed palaces in the sky were built to house millions of 9 to 5 clerks and corporate ladder climbers to operate the vast, growing (and financialized) services economy.

This brings on an…

Interlude

As I said, I saw abuse in my industry that just should not stand. It’s the overreach and punitive nature of the relationship between government and industry that was bad (at least back then, I’ve been out of the game for 13 years).

That is unrelated to our discussion of mining, but this punitive relationship was a concurrent challenge for manufacturing that piled on with the global outsourcing that systematically eroded America’s ability to robustly manufacture for itself. It was led by Wall Street types and politicians in whose pockets Wall Street resided. We became a nation of consumers and services recipients in the financialized economy with the King US Dollar sitting on top of the whole thing.

America had largely risen above the dirty jobs, like making things with the equipment necessary to do so, or digging critical minerals out of the ground, again with the equipment necessary to do so. Speaking of dirty jobs, I believe that if a large portion of politicians could have simply voted “make mining in the U.S. illegal” they would have done so. Manufacturing too. Let other countries do that dirty work while we rule the world under King Dollar’s tyranny.

In my agreement with current policy, I am talking my book as we began tracking the strategic investment case for MP back in 2023, and it finally proved out in 2025, under Trump. MP is the daddy, the Rare Earth producer and processor. But the case for small, viable exploration situations is compelling. This goes beyond REE and strategic minerals, obviously, with gold flying around at $4,000/oz. and silver at $50.

As I look back on the last few months, I realize that I began with a “basket” concept, as you may recall. A group of highly speculative, mostly TSX-V listed items for pure gambling. But over those months new information has been presented.

Information like the admin taking interest in smaller “resources” companies, as opposed to the already producing MP. Information like the TSX-V’s relentless drive upward from the depths of an 18 year hell. Information like gold, silver and now other metals ramming higher, which means demand it strong.

Strong demand presents a problem for miners of finite reserves. Hence, the hole diggers up north and west who’ve been nearly asphyxiated [for capital] for 18 years. In short, I am coming to see the play as having progressed from “basket” speculation to “try to find the best, most strategic and viable items and hold ’em.”

Among my holdings in the speculative exploration stocks operating in the U.S., is in Minnesota, (the stock is quite illiquid) in Michigan and Nevada, in Colorado and Canada’s Yukon, and Critical Minerals in Montana and Alaska, along with interests in the Canadian Yukon, BC, and Ontario. All of these stocks are multi-metal/mineral.

The point being that while I think the case is compelling for viable (read: non-scams) projects in the U.S., Canada and around the world, the Trump initiatives and “in the books” investments like the MP, Lithium Americas, Trilogy and Intel show an obviously motivated administration, putting its semi-nationalization strategies where its really big mouth is in the United States.

I’ll let Greg have the last word, speaking generally about the mineral exploration sector:

With the mining industry reliant on the juniors for nearly 100% of future production through dependence on the market to fund early stage to advanced stage projects (the majors only do exploration around their existing mines to replace reserves that have been depleted), and having starved those same juniors of capital for over 15 years, I think we are seeing the beginning of a generational revaluation of resources in the ground from extreme discounts to something that more realistically reflects the challenges of finding and developing these critical assets.

Bessent on the Right Track?

Am I going to add another positive check mark to an otherwise chaotic and sometimes infantile, sometimes petty, always vindictive Trump administration? Well, let’s see who Bessent picks as Fed Chair.

SecTreas Bessent, is interviewing a list now down to five Fed chair candidates, none of whom are named Miran. At least one (Rieder) has ideas about rolling back the Fed’s all omniscient power. If so, I was wrong in assuming Trump would install a robot who would simply carry on and make the worst of the Fed from Bernanke on, even worse.

“Roll back the use of some of its tools”???

Those “tools” created inflation through Funds Rate policy, QE, MMT and ever more eggheaded experimentation. Then when that went too far they went off the charts cynical (Bernanke: we’re going to “sanitize” inflation signals, he actually used that word) and ever more ingenious (and destructive) means. That God damn egghead created Operation Twist as a corrective to his previous policy.

And you wonder why the bond market erupted in 2022 and puked all of this toxic garbage up?

Maybe I am being naive in catching a glimpse of someone saying something I’ve been advocating for since Bernanke took us off an unsound path and right into a Wonderland of magical (and inflationary) possibilities. Please allow me this moment of positivity. :-)

A Trifecta for the Orange Man

All sides seem to be laying the credit for the cease fire in Gaza at Trump’s feet. You can click the pic to read, if you’d like. You can (and again, I do) say what you want about [Trump], but he’s gettin’ shit done in a world that probably needed a cattle prod right up its behind.

I’ll reserve further comment on Israel/Gaza because the politics behind the cease fire are anybody’s guess, and the true effects may not be known for some time.