Investing in a De-Globalising World: Where Political Risk Is Rising

Most investors would rather own the world they believe in than the one that exists. Free trade, cheap commodities and open borders still sit quietly inside many portfolios as default assumptions. Governments have moved on: more than 40 countries have revised their mining policies since 2020, according to research compiled by Zijin Mining, and that shift sits at the centre of investing in a de-globalising world.

Resource nationalism, tariffs and state equity stakes are no longer fringe risks. They now decide who captures the value in copper, lithium, nickel and gold, and the shift runs from Kinshasa to Washington.

If your portfolio still prices those assets on a free-trade script, you are holding a view of markets that policymakers have already abandoned. Here is a realistic map of where political risk is rising, and a reasoned case for why staying invested still beats sitting out.

Why are governments taking a bigger share of the resource pie?

Start in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In late 2025, the government capped cobalt hydroxide exports at roughly 96,000 tonnes for the year, moving from taxing production to restricting it outright.

Then look east. Indonesia banned unprocessed nickel ore exports in 2020, and the policy pulled nearly US$14 billion into domestic smelters. Nickel pig iron output nearly quadrupled by 2024.

Zimbabwe and Namibia followed with bans on unprocessed lithium exports. Zambia’s state miner ZCCM-IH lifted its stakes in Lubambe and Mingomba and raised copper royalties, while Guinea cancelled multiple mining permits. Chile went further, securing state participation in lithium through 2060 via arrangements with SQM and Codelco.

Mali shows what escalation costs. Its 2023 mining code raised potential state equity to 35% and royalties to 10%, and a dispute with Barrick ended in a US$430 million settlement. Gold output fell 19% in 2025, to 81.2 tonnes.

Mali’s experience also hints at a wider pattern, since gold rally nationalisation risk grows as windfall profits from foreign-operated mines become the most visible fiscal target for cash-hungry governments.

Line the cases up and the aggregate figures stop being surprising. Verisk Maplecroft finds 47 developing countries, 17 of them critical-mineral producers, have seen significantly more government involvement since Q1 2020. Foreign capital is not being shut out; the terms of entry are being rewritten.

The three forces behind the wave

Caixin/ThinkChina identify three drivers:

1. The scramble for minerals behind EVs, clean energy and AI, which gives cobalt-rich DRC its leverage.
2. Value retention at home, the logic behind Indonesia’s smelter push and the lithium bans in Zimbabwe and Namibia.
3. Great-power competition for secure supply chains, which turns Chile’s lithium into a strategic asset.

The read for you: an African copper or lithium project now carries fiscal and regulatory risk that belongs in the valuation from day one, not in the footnotes as a tail event.

Is this only an emerging-market problem? The US and the wider pendulum swing

It is tempting to file all of this under “Africa risk”. Washington’s own record makes that difficult.

Through 2025, the US government took equity positions in companies it deemed vital to national security:

• Intel: the Commerce Department took about 10% for US$8.9 billion.
• MP Materials: the Department of Defense took a 7.5-15% stake for US$400 million, plus warrants.
• Lithium Americas: the Energy Department took 5% stakes in the company and its Thacker Pass joint venture.

Trade policy points the same way. Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminium rose to 50% in 2025, while Section 301 tariffs include 100% on Chinese EVs and 25% on lithium-ion batteries and certain critical minerals.

The continuity matters more than any single measure. The Biden administration kept the tariffs Trump introduced, which suggests the direction holds regardless of who occupies the White House. The swing is unlikely to be linear, and it may run for years or decades, with China, Russia and Europe pursuing their own versions of self-sufficiency. China has its own export controls on critical minerals, though detailed figures were not available in the research.

The continuity across administrations reflects how entrenched trade protectionism has become, with tariff regimes increasingly treated as durable industrial policy rather than temporary bargaining tools.

That leaves investors with an uncomfortable discipline. In the source interview underpinning this analysis, the speaker borrows the term “financial justice warrior”, which he first heard from Chase Taylor while unsure whether Taylor coined it, to describe people who invest for the idealised world of free markets, no tariffs and the lowest commodity prices.

The core idea Put capital where the drivers of returns are likely to be, not where you wish they were.

For you, a US listing no longer signals low political risk. A portfolio built on a free-trade default is carrying an assumption nobody has examined.

What do the institutions say fragmentation will cost, and who bears it?

Intuition says this is expensive. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts numbers on it, and they are sobering without being apocalyptic.

The IMF calls the trend “geoeconomic fragmentation”: a policy-driven reversal of decades of integration in trade, capital and technology, increasingly justified on security grounds. Its modelling suggests the losses could be lasting.

Translated into portfolio terms, the consequences cluster in three places:

• Higher costs: local processing mandates raise upfront project capex, according to Investment Monitor.
• More volatility: commodity prices, especially for clean-energy minerals, are likely to swing harder.
• Capital reallocation: World Bank and IMF analysis shows foreign direct investment shifting toward semiconductors, critical minerals and clean energy, and toward “friendly” jurisdictions.

Commodity price fragmentation is already visible in diverging regional benchmarks, which is one channel through which the IMF’s projected volatility could reach portfolios, particularly in clean-energy minerals.

Yet the same institutions resist the doom reading. The IMF argues targeted cooperation in trade, debt and climate can contain the worst damage, pointing to selectively integrated networks rather than globalisation switched off. No institutional research in the record argues for cutting long-term equity exposure.

The evidence tells you to expect wider gaps between winners and losers. Spreading exposure across jurisdictions now matters more than a single large bet on one region.

What can Rome teach investors about staying invested through a long decline?

Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before the Storm covers roughly 146 BC to 78 BC, when the Roman Republic began to unravel. The speaker in the source interview offers it as an analogy, not a forecast, and the parallels are pointed: political infighting, inflation, immigration and foreign wars draining resources.

The decline moved in fits and starts. The republic did not collapse; it became an empire, which lasted about 500 years in the West and until 1453 in the East.

That is the unsettling part. A system can be ending and still run for centuries, with long stretches of order in between.

The speaker argues more centralised, autocratic rule can mean fewer possible outcomes and less short-term volatility, citing China’s roughly 20 years of strong growth. He is clear that such regimes end badly eventually and does not endorse them. No empirical studies in the research quantify how authoritarian models affect equity returns, so treat this as a hypothesis rather than a finding.

Here is the turn. The bad ending could arrive in 3, 30 or 40 years, and nobody knows which. While you wait in cash, inflation erodes it.

The story does not end well, but it has not ended yet.

How to stay invested without being naive

The cases from Mali, the DRC and Indonesia suggest three lessons for anyone exposed to resource projects:

1. Treat fiscal and regulatory change as a central part of project risk, not an afterthought.
2. Favour operators that align downstream processing with host-government goals.
3. Look for long-term contracts with built-in mechanisms to adjust terms as policy evolves.

At portfolio level, that translates into broader diversification by geography and sector, a political risk premium priced into exposed assets, and long horizons rather than market timing. These are frameworks, not security picks.

For you, an uncertain and possibly grim ending is a reason to manage risk more carefully. It is not a reason to leave the market.

For investors wanting to apply these lessons, our dedicated guide to mining geopolitical risk management shows how to build political risk into due diligence before committing capital.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Forward-looking views are speculative and subject to change based on market and policy developments.

Staying in the market with clear eyes: what changes and what does not

Political risk in resources is structural and global, reaching from Bamako to Washington. The IMF and World Bank confirm the costs without recommending an exit, and the Roman frame shows decline tends to be slow and uneven. What changes is the jurisdictional risk premium, the value of diversification, and how much volatility you should expect.

What does not change is the need to own growth assets if you want to outpace inflation. The practical next step is an audit of your own holdings: where are you quietly assuming free trade and stable host governments?

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.