| ISSUE 029 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Global stainless steel production reached 65.4 million tonnes in 2025, per Merafe Resources’ 2025 Integrated Annual Report, citing CRU data. About 90 percent of the world’s ferrochrome goes into stainless and specialty steels, per the same report. The United States had no domestic production of ferrochrome (ferrochromium in USGS data) in 2023, the latest year reported in the USGS Minerals Yearbook. | |
| Chromium has no substitute in stainless steel, its leading end use, or in superalloys, its major strategic end use, per the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. It remains on the final 2025 List of Critical Minerals, published in the Federal Register on November 7, 2025. | |
| US net import reliance for chromium, measured by chromium content across all forms, was an estimated 79 percent of apparent consumption in 2025, with no domestic chromite mining, and ferrochrome imports from 2021 to 2024 came 41 percent from South Africa, 24 percent from Kazakhstan and 6 percent from Russia, per the USGS. Global ferrochrome production fell from 17.1 million tonnes in 2024 to 15.9 million in 2025, per the Merafe report. Output outside China fell about 21 percent, while China’s grew more than 6 percent to about 9.5 million tonnes, around 60 percent of global supply, and South Africa’s dropped from 3.3 million tonnes to about 1.6 million, per the same report. | |
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Breaking: Trump’s New Currency Reset
President Trump is launching a new $250 bill with his face on it – the first living president to do so since Abraham Lincoln’s $10 demand note in 1861.
Source: The Kobeissi Letter, X.
Earlier this year, he instituted another currency change – insisting that his signature appear on all new bank notes.
If you’re starting to sense that Trump has taken an unusual interest in our money, you’re on the right track.
In fact, I’d like to show you that his new $250 bill is a mere distraction from a far bigger and more consequential change to U.S. currency being orchestrated behind the scenes.
Something that will affect every dollar you've ever saved or invested.
Bypassing all conventional legal and political channels, under the guise of national security, Trump is enacting a total money reset using a landmark executive order (14241).
Democrat or Republican, support him or despise him, it doesn't matter – the wheels are already in motion.
And that means every American may soon be forced to use Trump's New Dollar to fill your gas tank, buy groceries, pay the bills.
Which is why I've produced this critical new documentary laying out exactly what this means for your savings, your investments, and your family's financial future…
Detailing three important steps you can take today to prepare – including details on a core band of assets connected to Trump’s initiative that could surge, if this plays out as I predict…
Plus the name and ticker of my #1 move to make today.
As you’ll see in my briefing, the last time America reset its money like this – under Richard Nixon’s presidency in the 1970s – it created one of the greatest wealth divides in the history of our nation.
On one side, it minted an average of 1,300 new millionaires a day for over half a century. And on the other… the folks left behind, with many drowning in debt, and no idea how to use America’s new money to create wealth.
As Trump rolls out his new dollar, the question is:
| PLATE · Japanese steelmaking, 1955 to 1982 |
| In 1955 two Japanese steelmakers asked to license the basic oxygen furnace process from an Austrian firm. MITI selected one as general licensee and required it to give the other steelmakers equal access as sublicensees, per a 1991 Office of Technology Assessment report. All users shared the $1.2 million fee. |
| Over the 14-year license the process cost Japanese steelmakers 0.36 cents per ton, against 15 to 25 cents per ton in royalties paid by North American firms, per the same report. Japan made 6.7 percent of the world’s raw steel in 1960 and the United States 27.6 percent, per a 1988 NBER study. By 1982, the same study found, output per Japanese steelworker stood at 141 against a US index of 100. |
| In Japan in the 1950s and in South Africa in 2026, the decisive variable was the cost of conversion, not access to ore. |
| PLATE · Lion Smelter, Steelpoort, South Africa | |||
| On February 16, 2026, the Glencore-Merafe Chrome Venture tapped its first ferrochrome at Lion Smelter in Steelpoort, Limpopo Province, after recommissioning 50 percent of its operating capacity, per a Glencore statement. The restart followed NERSA’s approval of a 12-month interim tariff of 87.74 South African cents per kilowatt-hour, which the Venture said was too high to sustain operations over the long term, per the same statement. | |||
| On February 27, 2026, South Africa’s electricity minister said only 11 of the country’s 66 smelters remained operational, per SAnews. After NERSA approved a ferrochrome tariff of 62 South African cents (R0.62) per kilowatt-hour on May 29, per a Glencore statement, the Venture said on June 26 that its Wonderkop and Boshoek smelters would restart, per a Merafe SENS announcement, and Merafe guided 2026 ferrochrome production at 25 to 29 percent of the Venture’s installed capacity, per its interim results in August 2026. South Africa shipped 26,029 tonnes of high-carbon ferrochrome to the United States in August 2026, up 128 percent from July and second only to Canada’s 26,373 tonnes, per South African Revenue Service export data. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
