Episode 1: Free Market Fictions and Trade Frictions
A four-part series on the global rush for critical minerals and what it means for the North American continent and beyond.
Welcome to Continental Shift, a four-part series from The Break—Down and Geopolitical Ecology examining the rush for “critical minerals”—the commodities like cobalt, copper and lithium that are deemed “critical” by different governments depending on their priorities, whether that’s the transition to green energy, AI infrastructure, or high-tech military assets.
The struggle to control supply of these minerals is now a defining political challenge, driven by two major and connected global shifts: rising fragmentation, both geopolitical and economic, and an accelerating climate and ecological crisis that is remaking both the planet and the stakes of global politics.
At present, China remains the major node in global production and refining of critical minerals—something other world powers are seeking change. In this context, the US is working overtime to restructure critical mineral supply chains in their interest, expanding mines both within their own borders and pursuing them in so-called “friendly jurisdictions”. Increasingly, they’re looking to their neighbours on the continent: Mexico and Canada.
How these countries respond will have profound consequences not just for the continent, but for the world.
In this four-part series, we explore the global rush for critical minerals; the reasons underyling it; and the dynamics, institutions and histories shaping the struggle for resource dominance on the North American continent.
Continental Shift is made possible by support from the Public Scholars Initiative at the University of British Columbia.
Episode One: Free Market Fictions and Trade Frictions
Featuring Quinn Slobodian and Isabel Estevez
The phrase "trade regimes" may sound dry, but these rules and agreements are a defining architecture of the global economy. They determine who gets to exploit a country’s resources, and who profits from it. They determine whether states can be sued by private investors and corporations, or whether domestic sovereignty—of the state, or of Indigenous peoples, for example—is protected.
In this episode, we’re joined by historian Quinn Slobodian and economist Isabel Estevez to unpack how longstanding trade rules, investor protections and liberalization have shaped how resources are extracted and governed in North America.
After the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement entered limbo last week when negotiators failed to make the July 1st deadline for agreeing a new deal, those same rules and institutions are suddenly more shaky than they’ve been for years, raising big questions about how, and in whose interest, the global race for critical mineral dominance will be run.
Isabel Estevez is an institutional and development economist focusing on the dynamics of economic transformations, nature-economy relationships, and green transitions. She is the Co-Executive Director of i3T, and has advised policymakers in the US, Europe, and Latin America.
Quinn Slobodian is a Professor of International History at Boston University. He was a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and is the author of several books including Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, and most recently Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed (with Ben Tarnoff).
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