Copper edged higher after touching a seven-week low, as a weakening dollar and an artificial intelligence stock rally buoyed sentiment for the metal used in electrification, illustrating the competing forces that continue to buffet the industrial metals markets as the conflict’s resolution approaches.

The recovery came a day after a sharp slump driven by the prospect of higher interest rates, reflecting the volatility that the conflicting signals of monetary policy, dollar movements, and the AI demand have produced in the copper market.

China’s electric vehicle exports climbed to an all-time high in May, extending a surge fueled by the higher oil prices that the Gulf conflict has produced, as the country’s clean technology dominance and the rising global demand for alternatives to fossil fuels converge to drive the export boom.

Shipments of electric vehicles reached 9.2 billion dollars, up almost fifty percent from a year earlier, a sign of China’s growing competitive edge in advanced transport and the rising global demand for the alternatives to fossil fuels that the conflict has intensified.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is wielding its dominance of the global cobalt market with increasing strategic sophistication, using export restrictions to drain the market of excess and lift prices while simultaneously seeking to reduce its reliance on Chinese operators and pivot toward the West, particularly the United States.

The world’s largest producer of the strategic metal, which is used in everything from mobile phones to stealth bombers, is engaged in a complex rebalancing act that combines the assertion of greater control over its cobalt sector with the effort to diversify its partnerships and to integrate its artisanal mining into the official sector in ways that would satisfy the ethical concerns of Western buyers.

The lithium industry has grown markedly more optimistic about a market recovery, as booming demand for battery storage systems helps offset the slowdown in some electric vehicle markets, marking a striking shift in mood from the dour atmosphere that pervaded the industry a year earlier.

The recovery, with lithium prices having more than tripled since the previous year’s conference, reflects the emergence of stationary battery storage as a primary driver of demand, providing the robust foundation that the more volatile EV-driven demand had lacked and reshaping the outlook for a market that had suffered through overproduction and falling prices.

Asia’s imports of seaborne thermal coal are rebounding as China boosts purchases to compensate for soft domestic output and Japan and South Korea seek energy security amid the fallout from the Gulf conflict, illustrating the regional shift toward coal that the disruption to gas supply has driven.

The region’s imports are on track to reach 77.37 million metric tons in June, the most in six months and up a robust 22.3 percent from the year-earlier period, reflecting the convergence of the conflict-driven gas-to-coal switching in Japan and South Korea and the domestic supply shortfall driving Chinese imports.

A frenzy of venture capital investment is sweeping through China’s strategic emerging and future industries, with startups in space, quantum technology, nuclear fusion, and other frontier sectors raising enormous sums at soaring valuations as investors scramble to back the technologies that Beijing has prioritized in its competition with the United States.

The pitch by the Shanghai-based space startup Tectronic, raising twenty-two million dollars just two days after SpaceX’s historic market debut while touting its mission to help China catch up with the United States in the space race, exemplifies the fever that is inflating valuations and stirring fears of a bubble even as it channels capital toward the strategic technologies that the government has identified as national priorities.

The latest bout of political turmoil in Britain, which is set to bring the country its seventh prime minister in a decade, comes as energy security has moved to the forefront following the Gulf conflict, offering the incoming leader a chance to rethink the country’s North Sea oil and gas strategy.

Andy Burnham, poised to succeed Keir Starmer following his resignation, faces the central challenge of balancing the country’s long-term climate ambitions against the urgent need to tackle the high energy bills that have burdened households and businesses, a balance that the conflict has made more difficult and more pressing.

China’s independent oil refiners have slashed their operating rates to a nine-year low, highlighting the lingering impact of the Gulf conflict on the leading importer of Iranian crude and the broader transformation of Chinese oil demand that the conflict has accelerated.

Run rates at the so-called teapot refiners fell to 50.5 percent in the week to June 21, dropping below even the pandemic-era lows to the weakest level since 2017, as high feedstock costs, weak domestic fuel demand, and curbs on product exports squeezed the processors’ margins and prompted them to scale back.