prediction: copper will be increasingly contested, and you’ll be hearing way more about it. the global copper market is roughly ~$250b per year — an order of magnitude larger than rare earths and several times larger than lithium. as electricity demand accelerates, copper demand rises, with no real substitute at scale. after energy imports, copper is china’s greatest structural supply-chain weakness. china consumes ~55% of global copper but depends on imports for ~75% of its feedstock. most high-quality deposits sit in the americas and africa. the global game continues.