➡ New mining laws are expected to be introduced soon, allowing foreign companies to mine for gold, diamonds, and rare earth minerals. This comes amidst strategic national concerns about these resources. The laws are part of a push by the US to open Venezuela to American investment, especially in oil, gas, and mining, following a US raid that captured President Nicolas Maduro. Despite public support, the Trump administration has been applying pressure behind the scenes to achieve its objectives.

These new mining laws that are apparently expected soon include provisions that would allow foreign companies to, I love the wording here, exploit gold diamonds, and of course rare earths. Right when there’s strategic national concerns about those rare earths and critical minerals, it’s weird this would be happening. These are those antimony, copper, nickel, colton, silver, oh well hello there my friends Chris Marcus here with you for Arcadia economics on Tuesday March 10th exciting day in the market where gold futures currently up $137 well the silver futures are up $5.31 just under the $90 level and certainly there is quite a bit happening in the precious metals markets as I mentioned in the beginning there’s been a rather unusual saga in the gold market developing in Venezuela where a Trump team brokers multi-million dollar Venezuela gold deal and we’ll start with it’s thousand kilograms about 150 million dollars so not necessarily a game-changing amount but just struck me as odd where you had this incursion into Venezuela took out their leader not saying he was a good guy I’m just saying that in another country they went took him out talked about how they’re gonna rebuild the oil infrastructure and at a time where I continued here reports where you could have the perspective that the US is settling trade imbalances with gold still have never heard about that audit of Fort Knox but a lot plenty happening in the gold market a lot of demand in the east for gold and now here we have a deal just months after everything happened in Venezuela now there is a deal to secure gold to the US with Trappegora they’ll transport the gold to the US refineries keep in mind that Venezuela had issues getting access to their gold with the Bank of England I’m not sure we’re ever entirely resolved but certainly given what we’ve just seen especially if you’re someone who’s watched what’s happened especially in the last two and a half decades of American foreign policy and little on edge already thinking that I’ve seen this before this doesn’t look good you hope that’s not the case although then you add in that Venezuela mining reform could come soon acting president delsey Rodriguez US took out Maduro now they’re supporting delsey and US Secretary of Interior Doug Bergam who also heads the US National Energy Dominance Council showed up in South America with more than two thousand us mining and mineral companies I mean again I’m not saying there’s anything inappropriate going on here it just sound it doesn’t sound good would make for a good movie so basically Medora’s out although he was supposedly out because of drugs but now that he is at the figure that is being supported by the US is doing deals as part of a US push to open Venezuela to American investment especially in oil gas and mining as the Trump administration tries to exert more control over the country following a US raid that captured president Nicolas Maduro and in public Trump has heaped praise on Rodriguez for cooperating with the US and held her again on Wednesday saying she’s doing a great job although despite the public support behind the scenes the Trump administration has been applying pressure to achieve its objectives and US officials are threatening a legal case against Rodriguez that could include corruption and money laundering or supported Tuesday of course citing people familiar with the matter do are not going on record but Washington is also pushing her to arrest or detained several high-level party officials that it may want extradited now of course Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote on Twitter that all that was false so who knows what’s really going on with that doesn’t sound good but these new mining laws that are apparently expected soon include provisions that would allow foreign companies to I love the word here exploit gold diamonds and of course rare earths right when there’s strategic national concerns about those rare earths and critical minerals it’s weird this would be happening but that will be proposed in the coming days and Rodriguez says she hopes it’ll be passed swiftly we want they want to be the successful models of the hydrocarbon laws and have that reflected in the mining sector although fortunately she pointed out that the meeting built on the previous work from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright heard he did a great job because the agenda focused on metallic minerals non-metallic minerals and strategic and non strategic minerals although wouldn’t you know that her brother Jorge Rodriguez is actually the head of the National Assembly and has already ushered through changes to the oil regulations meant to stoke investment but they say the opportunities for collaboration and synergy between the two great countries of Venezuela and the United States are unlimited and interesting here they mentioned exploration has not yet taken place in Venezuela to confirm reserves of rare earths does that mean they’re going to a group of 17 minerals used to make magnets to turn power into motion although an official map published in 2021 showed reserves of antimony copper nickel-kolten molly magnesium silver oh there you go silver get that popping up there again zing titanium tungsten and uranium gee I’m invested in a handful of these and then just top on that as part of bilateral agreements Iranian companies in past years have been exploring for mineral resources in the country although that work did not lead to investment then in the time since that happened we can see on March 9th that the Venezuelan legislator has approved the mining laws in an initial vote that just seems like quite a combination just a couple months after apparently they used some sort of sonic directed energy weapon from reports that I’ve heard that maybe you have heard as well they knew we were coming and they were protected and our guys weren’t you know our guys are jumping out of helicopters and you know protected and they were but it was so brilliant the electricity for almost the entire country was boom turned on that’s when they knew there was a problem there was no electricity Caracas said there’s no electricity it’s not the only people with lights were the people that had candles was just off so we sort of got him a little by surprise but it was a brilliant it was brilliant tactically it was an incredible thing here we have a Trump reference to a sonic weapon and then we have comments reposted by the White House press secretary about one of the Venezuelan security guard saying something I felt like my head was exploding from the inside we all started bleeding from the nose and we won’t go into directed energy technology today although you can look up some of the things that Tesla was working on or who took his papers over and was digging through them after he passed away although one of the things that I’m sure that even the great Tesla would appreciate is that and this leads into some of the commodity force majeurs that we’ve seen recently first we had Uzbekistan basically has not been exporting any of their gold the country which mines about 130 tons per year exploded no non-monetary gold in January extending a halt in sales that began late last year Bloomberg called it hoarding its output of the yellow metal then a couple days ago I mentioned how to buy gold flows curved as flights halted due to the US Israeli strikes on Iran now we see that gold that stuck in Dubai is being sold at a discount as the war widens and then back on Monday we had an aluminum maker looking to oversee stocks to avoid delays and then just a day after that aluminum hits the highest since 2022 as Alba declares a force majeure we also saw one of the world’s largest LNG exporters cutter energy declare force majeure amid Iranian attacks and certainly I’m not saying that this will happen I also wouldn’t sell to put it zero do you eventually get something like that in the silver market especially if we’re going into it I keep hearing the AI experts warning that we’re hitting the turning point and if AI is really going to be taking off and silver is a required component even if you have thrifting in the solar panel sector not impossible to imagine one day seeing something like that happen in silver we came pretty close over the past couple of months and while that’s happening metal continuing to leave the COMEX we’ve seen about two to four million ounces come out per day here you go January 26 so about five weeks ago 450 million ounces now down to 351 million ounces so it’s coming out of there quickly still a lot by historical standards yet has not stopped yet similar we saw even further reductions in China where again the premium remains in the Chinese market so this sure does set up for some exciting times in the gold and silver markets where one final check we see the gold futures up a hundred thirty eight dollars now to 50 242 and for those of you who have looked at the mining stock for exposures on the rally did want to thank today’s sponsor who just set a free cash flow record for the fourth quarter of 2025 as well as the full year earnings of 2025 and Fortuna CEO Jorge Canosa actually joined me on the show shortly after those earnings were released and let’s take a listen to hear what he had to say about the current gold environment for Fortuna with respect to our free cash flow or average realized gold price for for us on our gold sales was four hundred four thousand one hundred and sixty six today were twenty percent higher than that if I compare the gold price of the fourth quarter to the previous quarter we are also we were twenty percent higher in the fourth quarter compared to the previous and if I compare the fourth quarter average price that we achieved on our gold sales to what we achieved a year ago in the fourth quarter of 2024 the gold price was 57 percent higher right so clearly the the margin expansion in the business has been very very significant and we are all capturing the full value of that so we generated record free cash flow as pointed out in the quarter and for the year or earnings or adjusted earnings were very much in line with analyst expectations and on the net cash from operations before working capital adjustments we had a 48 cents per share which was also well ahead of the consensus of finalists at 43 cents per share so all of this was very well taken by the market well thank you to Jorge thank you for watching at home sure appreciate you being here if you enjoy today’s show do go ahead and share it that helps us get the message out to more people so they can see what is going on in the gold and silver world and certainly if you want to find out more about fortuna mining well great way to do so is hearing what Jorge had to say in that call following the stunning earnings release which is coming your way now
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