Editorial: Gold loves chaos. Mines don’t.

In this editorial for the February edition of The Northern Miner, we take a look at how the first month of the new year has seemed crazier than most. 

Precious metal prices hit levels that not long ago would have seemed preposterous. A mid-January Goldman Sachs forecast for $5,400 per oz. gold by next December looked aggressive at the time and seemed behind the curve just days later. 

Two of the largest miners, Rio Tinto and Glencore, said they are again in talks about merging to create what would be the industry’s biggest company ever. It would eclipse the most recent mega-deal, Anglo American’s acquisition of Teck Resources, which is now attempting to clear its final regulatory hurdles. 

Of course, it all truly got going when American forces snatched then-President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela on Jan. 3. We examined the South American country’s mining and metals potential here. 

Then the Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell with threats of potential criminal prosecution related to a central bank building renovation. “Unprecedented” has become a weak and overused word over the past year, but here it fits again: openly threatening the Fed’s independence, a bedrock of Western economic policy. 

Adding more gasoline to the institutional fire, Donald Trump went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with renewed vigour and a fresh declaration that Greenland must come under direct U.S. control. We looked at why the icy island is not the metals and mining bonanza the administration claims. 

Davos

At Davos, in last month’s central moment for Canada and, by extension, for our industry, Prime Minister Mark Carney argued for a new way forward. 

In a speech lauded globally, if not in the White House, Carney argued that the old rules-based order is no longer functioning as advertised; that great powers are using tariffs, finance and supply chains as weapons; and that middle powers like Canada must build strategic autonomy in energy, food, defence and critical minerals through new trade relationships and alliances. 

That isn’t anti-mining. In fact, it is explicitly pro-mining, pro-infrastructure and pro-permitting speed. 

The prime minister outlined how Canada is responding by cutting taxes, removing internal trade barriers, and fast-tracking roughly $1 trillion of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals and trade corridors. Countries should stop “living within the lie” and pretending the system still works as it did, he said. 

This is a tricky moment for the industry. Carney’s speech aligns with mining’s strategic interests — critical minerals, fast-tracking projects, trade corridors, defence and energy security — even as it attacks the broader transactional world that Trumpism represents. 

Trumpism has been good for parts of the mining business. Tariff chaos and geopolitical stress push up gold prices. Deregulation and faster approvals in the U.S. help projects move. Tax cuts benefit capital-intensive industries and wealthy owners. “America First” industrial policy increases demand for domestic minerals. 

Stability

So mining executives are in an awkward position. They benefit financially from the instability Carney is criticizing. But they need long-life, stable, predictable investment regimes to build $5-billion-to-$20-billion mines. 

The smart response for the mining industry is not to take sides in a culture war, but to align itself openly with the logic of strategic autonomy and critical minerals that Carney is laying out. The industry can say, credibly, that the world is fragmenting, that supply chains are being weaponized, and that Canada and its allies need secure, domestic and allied sources of copper, nickel, uranium, potash, gold and rare earths.  

And it can say, just as credibly, that achieving that requires faster permitting, deeper capital pools and major investments in infrastructure. 

At the same time, the industry can acknowledge a quieter truth: volatility may be good for trading, but it is bad for building. Gold miners may love price spikes and macro stress, but builders of copper, uranium and potash mines do not. Mines are built for 30 years, not for one election cycle.  

A sensible industry line is that short-term volatility may help some prices, but multi-decade assets require policy stability, predictable rules and reliable trade relationships. That fits squarely with Carney’s argument against a world of permanent coercion and retaliation. 

Disorder

The industry’s strongest political case, in fact, is to frame mining as part of the solution rather than as a beneficiary of chaos. The argument is not that miners are trying to profit from disorder, but that they are trying to reduce strategic vulnerability in energy, defence, food and industry.  

That means building mines in Canada and allied countries even if it costs more than sourcing from the cheapest or most convenient jurisdiction. Once again, that maps almost perfectly to Carney’s concept of strategic autonomy. 

And finally, even if some executives privately welcome the gold-price impact of geopolitical stress, it is not in the industry’s long-term interest to be seen as cheering instability. The permitting, financing and social-licence environment for mining is far better in a world of rules — even imperfect ones — than in a world of pure power politics.