China will accelerate investment in alternative nickel supply sources and strengthen its role across the metal\u2019s wider supply chain, analysts said, after the United States finalised a deal with Indonesia on Thursday that will give America unrestricted access to the country\u2019s industrial commodities.<\/p>\n
While the US Supreme Court\u2019s tariff ruling last week could add some uncertainty<\/a> to US-Indonesia trade, the agreement<\/a> has the potential to reshape the global supply chain for nickel \u2013 a metal used to make stainless steel and some electric vehicle batteries.<\/p>\n \u201c[The US-Indonesia deal] is quite important and China will not like it,\u201d said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region at Natixis. \u201cChina does have leverage through its big stake in Indonesian nickel mines and could try to retaliate by slowing tech transfers or pulling back investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Indonesia has emerged as a decisive player in the nickel market in recent years, accounting for more than 60 per cent of global mine supply for the metal, according to a Goldman Sachs article published last week.<\/p>\n The recent rally in global nickel prices \u2013 which saw the price of the base metal jump more than 30 per cent between mid-December and January \u2013 was largely driven by Indonesia\u2019s decision to restrict how much ore could be mined, Goldman Sachs said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow Indonesia\u2019s supply decisions are the lever the market is watching,\u201d said Lavinia Forcellese, a commodities analyst with Goldman Sachs Research. \u201cAnd relatively small changes in policy or approvals can have an outsize impact on global balances and prices.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China will accelerate investment in alternative nickel supply sources and strengthen its role across the metal\u2019s wider supply…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112444,1668,986,2102,72,114,113,7316,61,1665,60,28939,112441,146908,1666,146906,146907,115,73421],"class_list":{"0":"post-314379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-alicia-garcia-herrero","9":"tag-asia-pacific","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-beijing","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-china","14":"tag-economy","15":"tag-goldman-sachs","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-indonesia","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-jingtian-gongcheng","20":"tag-natixis","21":"tag-pacific-forum","22":"tag-philippines","23":"tag-rezki-syahrir","24":"tag-southeast-asian","25":"tag-united-states","26":"tag-us-supreme-court"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}