Here are the 20-second highlights of what we covered:

• China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quietly published an enforcement framework for rare earths that institutionalizes its grip on production rather than relying on visible export bans, two weeks before Trump’s scheduled Beijing summit.

• Project Vault’s first operational details landed this week, and they look less like a strategic reserve and more like an opening bid. The U.S. Export-Import Bank confirmed the $12B stockpile will source critical minerals globally (including from China) before any preference for domestic or allied supply kicks in.

• The DRC went further than any African producer this decade in asserting state control over its mining sector. In a single week, it combined a U.S.- and UAE-funded paramilitary force with a 30-day audit of export revenues.

• Critical Metals Corp consolidated 92.5% of the Tanbreez heavy rare earth deposit in a deal valuing European Lithium at roughly $835M, sustaining the pattern of Western capital chasing resource control while leaving the harder problem (separation and metallurgy at an industrial scale), structurally unresolved.

• The OECD’s annual export-restrictions inventory confirmed what specialist watchers already suspected: critical minerals weaponization is no longer a uniquely Chinese tool. Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Argentina are now meaningful contributors.

• Capital flows into mining ETFs more than doubled year-on-year to $87.4B by March 31, with $8.24B in net inflows in Q1 alone, suggesting institutional positioning has finally caught up with the supply-chain narrative.