More from @tanvi_ratna
Jan 10
Everyone says Venezuela is about oil, gold, and rare earths
But the math doesn’t math. Each burns billions for America and goes nowhere fast
Instead, the true White House strategy seems far more novel. They aren’t lying—but it’s also not what you think 👇🧵
2/ To understand this better first let’s delve into each resource.
To monetize a resource you need: verified geology → secure sites → power/logistics → enforceable contracts → processing/export routes → years of capex.
Venezuela fails that chain across almost everything.
The Venezuela “oil grab” story fails on economics.
Orinoco crude is extra-heavy, closer to oil sands than shale: high lifting costs, diluent blending, specialized refineries. A real ramp to 2–3M bpd needs $100–150B and 5–7…
More from @tanvi_ratna
Jan 10
Everyone says Venezuela is about oil, gold, and rare earths
But the math doesn’t math. Each burns billions for America and goes nowhere fast
Instead, the true White House strategy seems far more novel. They aren’t lying—but it’s also not what you think 👇🧵
2/ To understand this better first let’s delve into each resource.
To monetize a resource you need: verified geology → secure sites → power/logistics → enforceable contracts → processing/export routes → years of capex.
Venezuela fails that chain across almost everything.
The Venezuela “oil grab” story fails on economics.
Orinoco crude is extra-heavy, closer to oil sands than shale: high lifting costs, diluent blending, specialized refineries. A real ramp to 2–3M bpd needs $100–150B and 5–7 years.
That’s not "loot," more like a capital sink.
Read 10 tweets
Nov 3, 2025
Of all the clips from Trump’s 60 Minutes interview, one stands out for policy:
“We can be bigger, better, stronger just working with [China] rather than knocking them out.”
China was one of Washington’s last bipartisan consensus. Has the view changed? Some signals 👇🧵
Key security think tank - RAND’s October 2025 report surprised many. Once hawkish on China, it now calls for “muted rivalry,” urging engagement over escalation and pressing Taiwan toward restraint.
Public sentiment is shifting. The Chicago Council poll from Oct ’25 shows Democrats favor engagement with China while Republicans remain hawkish.
The bipartisan consensus on China as a strategic competitor is fracturing — creating new political room for recalibration.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 31, 2025
Everyone’s debating who won the Xi–Trump summit.
But won what? Tariffs? Soybeans? Optics?
The true contest is over future capacity — and the scoreboard isn’t linear.
China plays for throughput. America plays for time.
Here’s the asymmetry that actually matters 🧵
The U.S. controls stacked chokepoints:
EDA software (Synopsys, Cadence)
Lithography (ASML, Applied Materials)
AI chips (Nvidia, AMD, Intel)
If China falls behind in just one, it stalls in the stack. America then doesn’t just lead — it compounds ahead.
China’s leverage is real — but it peaks on use.
-Tariff threats -Rare-earth dominance -Embargoes
Each flex accelerates substitution. Each embargo justifies a new refinery, alliance, or export control.
Power that burns itself to be seen ≠ durable power.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 29, 2025
The U.S. isn’t rebuilding China’s rare-earth empire — it’s leapfrogging it.
Science, finance & alliances are converging into a multi-pronged strategy that could compress decades into years
The membrane story was just the start..🧵
U.S. labs are rewriting the chemistry.
Membranes & protein binders can bypass solvent extraction — and now, proof is scaling:
@ucore (UURAF) has processed 4k tons under a DoD grant and is building a Louisiana plant by 2026
If it works, China’s moat is hit hard
The Pentagon isn’t just funding — it’s market-making.
A 10-year price floor & guaranteed offtake for MP Materials turned rare earths into an asset class.
Industrial policy as capital structure — Washington learned from Wall Street.
Read 6 tweets
Oct 9, 2025
In June, I was first to say Trump’s Gaza Riviera pitch wasn’t cosmetic—it was core to IMEC, an economic corridor to counter China’s Belt & Road.
Some called it a stretch. But the Gaza rebuild strategy confirms it.
Gaza will be wired for investor-grade trade, not just rebuilt🧵
For context, revisit my June thread—where I linked Trump’s Gaza play to IMEC’s stalled spine. The corridor needed Gaza stable to restart.
Since then, every move has aligned: coalitions formed, plans advanced. It isn’t just about the hostages.
Trump’s Gaza plan centers on a $70–100B investor-led trust to remake Gaza into a secure trade zone.
Backed by US-Gulf capital, it blends land tokenization, megaprojects, and a trusteeship model to wire Gaza into IMEC—with jobs, ROI, and rare-earth access in play.
Read 7 tweets
Aug 22, 2025
SEISMIC: Jerome Powell just scrapped the 2020 "average inflation targeting" playbook.
Now, 2% inflation means 2%—no intentional overshoot.
This shift rewrites central banking orthodoxy and signals the end of the easy-money era post-2008.
This changes policy and markets 🧵
The last framework allowed inflation overshoots to "make up" for past misses.
That misfire precipitated inflation spikes of 9.1% in 2022—highest in 40 years.
Powell’s reset restores inflation as a ceiling, not an average.
No longer just worried about unemployment being too high but equally about it being too low.
The Fed can tighten preemptively to cool hot labor markets.
That’s a hard pivot from the “employment first” bias and signals a balanced dual mandate focus going forward.
Read 6 tweets