Jack Lifton - The Critical Importance of Battery & PGM Metals

Original Airdate: June 4, 2020
Part of Grid Metals Inc. Live Town Hall Q&A

Jack Lifton is the CEO of Jack Lifton, LLC and is a consultant, author, and lecturer on the market fundamentals of technology metals. “Technology metals” is a category term now in wide use that he coined at the beginning of the twenty-first century to describe those strategic metals whose electronic properties make our technological society possible. These include copper, the rare earths, the platinum group metals, the steel alloy metals, lithium, cobalt, graphite and most of the rare critical metals and materials necessary for our health, safety, and technologies, both consumer and military.

"Today you can't make a car without rare earths, you can't make a car without palladium, platinum and rhodium. None of these materials is the United States self-sufficient and yet just the American new car market. It's half a trillion dollars a year. The American used car market. It's bigger than that. Just the automotive industry. The consumption of, for example, uses 10,000 tons of rare earths a year. How much of that is produced and refined in the United States? None. This situation obviously can only go on if we are allowed to do it by those who now control these exotic materials."