Strategic metal or not, historically this was meant with relation to good old bad Soviet Union. Now probably China is also included for that purpose. I don't think the US want any metal to be fully controlled by these two countries.
The main strategic commodity is oil, and as long as the US has the world biggest and best navy, and friends in the middle east, then the various metals are not so strategic any longer.
With Canada as a good and friendly neighbour they have secure access to uranium, iron ore, nickel, copper, zinc and others. Aluminum from latin and South America, then of course friends in South Africa and Australia.
Yes, nickel is strategic but it is plenty of it to fill demands by the US. Metals are also recycled from scrap, roughly half of US steel and aluminum come from recycling
Some country could try to make problems by reduce sales of certain metals, let us say platinum and palladium from Russia. Sure it would lead to a price increase, but South Africa as well as recyling would cover any critical demand. Catalysts and clean environment would suffer, but not critical to the US.
People and many government officials have for zeons proclaimed that the world is running out of everything such as metals. The argument has been that see, the world only has 20-30 years of reserves left. The reason for that is very simple, no mining company that is in the business for making money will spend much on exploration if they already have 20-30 years of production in the bank. After more than 100 years of consumption, today we have more known reserves of any metal than at any time in the past, this in spite of ever increasing consumption. Beats me
For NOT's SP to increase we just have to find more of that good nickel ore with lots of platinum group metals present. We have to find 20 years reserve of production at some significant production rate such as 30 to 50,000 tonnes of nickel annually. IMHO that is the only thing that will increase the share price significantly. Talks and dealings if anything can only lower the value.
