Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

In the end, economic reality prevails. Green steel has no future in Germany, regardless of how much funding may continue to flow through the channels of the green subsidy machine: At Germany’s overregulated, energy-policy-driven and increasingly sidelined industrial location, industrial production is becoming less and less profitable.

That ArcelorMittal, one of the green economy’s poster boys, threw in the towel at the end of the week and announced that it would end steel production at its Duisburg site is the latest painful blow to the proponents of the green transformation ideology.

From October next year, ArcelorMittal will completely close the Duisburg steelworks and will also cease operating the billet rolling mill, where around 800 employees are currently employed. Around 550 employees could be affected by the closure. Only the wire rod mill is to remain. The semi-finished products required to operate it will in future be sourced from other ArcelorMittal sites and external producers.

The news carries a double weight: That green steel — meaning steel produced through a production route in which hydrogen is used instead of carbon as the reducing agent — would not be able to compete in the face of significantly lower production costs at other locations is hardly surprising. But the fact that, ultimately, even conventional steel production is gradually having to retreat from Germany is tragic — a resounding no from business to the ideologically contaminated energy and location policies of the slowly crumbling industrial heart of Europe.

The basic materials industry is a fundamental component of industrial value chains. Particularly in view of geopolitical tensions, national control over raw materials and primary products is becoming increasingly important. Since the best year, 2018, crude steel production in Germany has fallen from 42.4 million tons to 34.09 million tons in 2025, a decline of around 20 percent — a dramatic indication of the complete failure of Germany’s energy and industrial location policies.

The green transformation is crumbling before our eyes while Germany’s industrial base is being deindustrialized. Capital seeks better returns, regardless of how rosy the world of the green transformers surrounding former Economy Minister Robert Habeck, the spiritus rector of the ecological central planners, may have been.

For Habeck, green steel “Made in Germany and Europe” was indispensable. The Green politician was convinced that steel produced with coal would have no future on the world market. How wrong one can be!

Representatives of this transformation ideology are presumably looking on at developments in the industry in bewilderment. Where is the traitor? they will ask themselves. After all, limitless subsidies, credit assistance and artificially imposed cost disadvantages through the CO₂ mechanism were all made available to traditional competitors in order to push this artificial product forward.

ArcelorMittal is by no means the only corporation pulling back. Previously, thyssenkrupp and Salzgitter also abandoned the misguided notion that they would one day be able to produce green steel in Germany.

Ultimately, everyone has to ask themselves: What does it actually cost to produce one ton of green steel? And who will compensate for the loss-making operation in the face of substantially cheaper, considerably more cost-effective competition, for example from India or China? Will these companies have to remain dependent on the taxpayer forever?

The cost gap is enormous: Depending on the calculation and production conditions, green steel increases production costs by around $100 to $500 per ton. For the European steel industry, the conversion to low-carbon production methods is estimated to entail additional costs of 35 to 100 percent per ton. This simply cannot work.

Green steel was one of the political pet projects of the Green Deal. Companies that decided — or were politically encouraged — to convert their production were supposed to be supported through two subsidy channels.

On the one hand, there was the classic subsidy payment. In the case of ArcelorMittal, around €1.3 billion in funding was earmarked for converting the plants in Bremen and Eisenhüttenstadt; the overall project was estimated at around €2.5 billion. Direct reduction plants and electric arc furnaces were planned, with everything ultimately intended to run on hydrogen. Then came the surprise withdrawal: On June 19, 2025, ArcelorMittal announced the end of the projects. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the €1.3 billion was never drawn down. What a blow to green ideology: Even massive public funding could not make the project profitable.

A second subsidy channel for green cronyism runs through the CO₂ emissions trading system. Energy-intensive producers such as the steel industry receive free certificates to protect them against international competitors with lower climate-related costs. If a company emits less CO₂ than permitted by its freely allocated certificates, it avoids purchasing additional allowances and can sell surplus pollution rights to other companies. Conventional steel production is made relatively more expensive by this allocation mechanism — everything possible is being done to keep the industrial homunculus of green steel somehow breathing.

Since January 1, 2026, the CBAM mechanism is supposed to provide additional protection for industry. It is not a formal tariff barrier, but it serves a similar function: CO₂-intensive imports such as steel are now subject to comparable regulatory costs imposed by the EU climate machine. Yet even this market barrier cannot change the fact that industrial production in Germany has simply become unprofitable.

Along the entire value chain — from conversion subsidies and free certificates to protection against foreign competition — the state is playing every card in its hand to impose its centrally planned environmentalism on the private sector.

Brussels and Berlin are thus providing an impressive demonstration of the internal contradictions and high costs of a centrally planned state economy. Everyone can now see what happens when the state interferes with price formation and dictates technology and the actions of individual companies: It becomes expensive for the taxpayer. Costs do not simply disappear; they are merely redistributed and concealed through subsidies. When the state repeatedly intervenes in the economy, scarce resources no longer flow to where competition would generate the greatest benefit. Instead, they flow into the pockets of those whose ingenuity lies in hunting for grants and subsidies. This is how the final chapter of the market economy begins.

* * * 

About the author:  Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

China, the world’s largest oil importer, is bidding up crude prices across Africa, Canada, and Latin American markets as disruptions in the Hormuz chokepoint and limited Iranian supplies intensify competition for alternatives. The scramble is squeezing smaller Chinese refineries that once relied on heavily discounted Iranian barrels, according to a new Bloomberg report. 

The renewed Chinese buying marks a major shift from a period when subdued Chinese buying helped restrain crude oil prices. With Iranian exports almost entirely shut off by the US blockade and fighting flaring again, as seen Monday when Saudi Aramco’s Jizan oil facilities were reportedly hit, the race to find replacement supplies around the world is becoming an increasingly expensive task for the Chinese. 

Traders spoke with Bloomberg. Here’s what they had to say:

The turnaround is producing spikes in the price of various grades. Congo’s Djeno crude was offered to Chinese buyers at premiums of as high as $20 a barrel over ICE Brent this week, up from around $15 a couple of weeks ago, according to traders who asked not to be named as they’re not authorized to speak to the media.

Chinese buyers are also buying tanker loads of crude from Canada, Brazil, and Argentina, while stronger demand has lifted prices for Russia’s ESPO crude. Asian buyers are also pushing Dubai crude futures toward $100 per barrel.  

Chinese seaborne crude imports aren’t back to prewar levels and are currently trending toward 10 million barrels per day – still below pre-conflict levels. That means the race for alternative supplies may still intensify. 

Bloomberg pointed out that the rebound in crude imports comes as refinery math improves and inventories are being rebuilt in China. Improved processing margins, the resumption of fuel exports, and commercial restocking are encouraging refiners to ramp up purchases, according to GL Consulting founder Liao Na. 

Smaller independent refiners, known as teapots, face the greatest pressure because their traditional sourcing channels for Iranian and Venezuelan crude have eroded this year as access to those supplies has collapsed amid the Trump administration’s push to rewire global energy markets. 

Liao said, “China’s robust buying lately is largely driven by refiners taking advantage of decent margins,” adding, “Active restocking by commercial players has also helped, but it’s not necessarily a sign of stronger underlying demand that’s supporting the recovery.”

Separately, Goldman Sachs energy expert Daan Struyven expects China’s ability to adjust purchases to prices to help moderate any spikes in crude prices.

Brent Crude 

Notably, China has a massive SPR against Brent crude prices in triple-digit territory. Its crude inventories are estimated at at least 1 billion barrels, giving buyers room to reduce purchases when prices become unattractive.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

On Thursday evening, Volkswagen’s Supervisory Board unanimously approved the company’s “Future Plan 2030.” The decision had originally been scheduled for Friday. By moving faster, Volkswagen is not only seeking to underline that the situation is genuinely serious, but also that it has recognized the danger and is now taking control of the situation again. Symbolism is everything these days, as the damage caused by the company’s business strategy of recent years has become visible like a gaping wound. Supervisory Board Chairman Hans Dieter Pötsch described the decision as evidence of the Group’s determination to transform itself and work with all its strength toward its long-term future and competitiveness, as Pötsch put it. Nevertheless, the impression remains that the Group’s consolidation course represents less a controlled downsizing than an internal corporate collapse — the twilight of an economic era.

50,000 jobs worldwide are to be eliminated by the middle of the 2030s. Social plans and early-retirement offers will probably account for the lion’s share of the workforce reduction. Volkswagen is said to be facing an overcapacity of 500,000 vehicles in Europe. The restructuring costs for the Group could amount to as much as €10 billion. VW is stumbling over social hurdles that the company itself created during the good times — German labor law prevents a rapid, situation-appropriate adjustment of corporate structures to the conditions of the market and the company’s actual economic strength.

For Germany as an industrial location, the outlook is bleak: VW’s plants in Emden, Hanover and Zwickau, as well as the Audi plant in Neckarsulm, are likely to fall victim to the Group’s downsizing. The decision has not yet been formally made — by the end of June 2027, the company intends to clarify how the individual sites will proceed. From 2031 to 2034 onward, there will no longer be a competitive follow-up allocation of production at these plants, suggesting that VW is preparing to abandon the sites.

Remarkably, only a few days ago, CEO Oliver Blume had emphasized during a visit to the Zwickau plant that the site would, as he put it, receive the same chance as every other plant in Europe. Blume, however, had already pointed to its lack of profitability compared with other locations: Labor costs there were more than twice those of comparable European sites, according to Blume.

This is where the real problem lies: Volkswagen is no longer competitive. Excessive labor costs, excessive energy costs and rampant overregulation are driving not only carmakers but industrial production in general away from Germany.

There is indeed an urgent need for action in Wolfsburg. The China business in particular has virtually collapsed. Overall, revenue in the first half of the current year fell slightly to €158.1 billion. The problem is that operating profit plunged by 11.6 percent to €5.9 billion, leaving an embarrassingly low operating margin of just 3.8 percent. It is the continuing negative trend that is causing concern. Volkswagen therefore does not merely have a sales problem, but above all an immense cost problem. The possibility that liquidity problems may also be becoming visible was demonstrated by the sale of the Group’s large-engine subsidiary Everllence, formerly MAN Energy Solutions: Volkswagen sold a majority stake to U.S. investment firm Bain Capital, generating proceeds of €7.4 billion.

Volkswagen — and with it the entire German automotive sector as well as energy-intensive industries more generally — has its back against the wall. As Bild reports, citing internal Volkswagen Group data, factory costs per vehicle at the Emden plant amount to €4,850, roughly 4.5 times the comparable figure at VW’s Chinese plant in Tianjin, where the figure is €1,078. Direct production labor costs are reportedly €74 per hour in Emden, compared with €12 in Tianjin — a factor of more than six.

The mistakes of the past become particularly apparent when looking at labor productivity. In Emden, the calculation comes to 29 vehicles per employee per year, compared with 51.3 in Tianjin. That corresponds to roughly 77 percent more vehicles per employee. Absenteeism due to illness also differs dramatically in the internal comparison: In Emden, the rate is 10.5 percent, compared with 1.0 percent in Tianjin. This figure is more than merely a personnel-policy issue affecting internal operations. Has the downward spiral into which the Group and the entire industry have fallen perhaps already left its mark on employee morale? In any case, this particular figure requires interpretation, precisely because it is so striking.

The consequences of Germany’s nuclear phase-out and the continued expansion of climate regulation have been discussed often enough here. Taken together, they create the impression of an ideologically driven economic suicide by a satiated society that was convinced of its own success — and must now watch as its industrial substance, the engine of prosperity, is ground down between excessive energy and labor costs, growing regulation and the merciless forces of global competition.

Volkswagen has become a victim of increasing political central planning and the permeation of the corporate landscape with environmental ideology. The lesson now is clear: corporatism and reliance on political steering do not pay off in the long run. In the end, things turn out as they always do: Others pay the bill — namely employees and investors who had placed their trust in the future of the automaker.

* * * 

About the author:  Thomas Kolbe, a German graduate economist, has worked for over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.

European natural gas prices are trading near their highest level in more than three years as the race to replenish storage puts a bid under prices, while ongoing disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz intensify competition for scarce LNG cargoes ahead of winter.

On Tuesday morning, European natural gas benchmark futures edged up nearly 3% to trade around 75 euros per megawatt-hour, the highest level since early January 2023.

Bloomberg reporter Priscila Azevedo Rocha noted, “Europe needs higher gas prices in order to attract more seaborne cargoes to its shores, but with less than a month left until the heating season, the region’s inventories are still lagging behind.”

Rocha’s view was very similar to the assessment in Goldman Sachs commodities expert Samantha Dart’s note last week, in which she said December 2026 TTF prices may need to exceed 100 euros per megawatt-hour to discourage Asian LNG demand.

“We have argued that, in the absence of an improvement in LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) (Exhibit 1), European gas prices (TTF) would need to rise to discourage Asia LNG demand, thereby freeing incremental cargoes to be sent to Europe to help manage European gas storage levels,” Dart explained.

EU natural gas storage facilities were around 67% full at the start of the week, compared with a 15-year average of around 72.5% for this time of year. Readers can see the latest chart pack from MarketEar on EU natural gas here.

Separately, Timera Energy analysts wrote in a note earlier, “As the European gas market heads into winter with unusually low inventories, its flexibility to absorb further supply or demand shocks is limited,” adding, “Europe is pricing up to outcompete Asia for marginal LNG.”

Beyond tight gas markets, the struggling continent also has to contend with a diesel crisis. As we warned in early August, “winter is coming“…

The National Weather Service has issued heat advisories across California’s Central Valley and coastal areas, including the Bay Area and Los Angeles, with more severe extreme heat warnings in parts of Southern California. Cooling demand is expected to soar over the next several days, putting pressure on the power grid, particularly in the evening as solar generation declines.

Bloomberg reports that Los Angeles-area temperatures are forecast to reach 85F to 105F, roughly 10 to 15 degrees above normal. San Francisco could hit 86 degrees Wednesday, while Sacramento is expected to reach 100 degrees Thursday.

The California Independent System Operator forecasts that peak power demand will hit 47,379 megawatts Wednesday, below the September 2022 record of 52,061 megawatts.

CAISO, which operates the power grid serving roughly 80% of California and a small part of Nevada, forecasts Thursday’s peak at around 45,183 megawatts.

Wholesale power prices are already reflecting the incoming surge in cooling demand. Southern California’s SP15 hub saw its day-ahead price for Tuesday’s 6 p.m. hour reach $87.69 per megawatt-hour, the highest hourly reading in a little over a week. Grid monitoring company Arcus Power compiled the data on its NRGStream platform.

Forecasts from Bloomberg show that maximum temperatures in California will peak Thursday at around 95F before sliding to about 75F by mid-month.

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Senior officials inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were baffled late last week when Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro issued a statement that Pentagon officials are trying to “raid” NIH funds to cover defense shortfalls. “The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DOD,” wrote DeLauro, who serves as the top Democrat on House Appropriations.

DeLauro’s statement spurred a flurry of media reports, including a fact-addled piece by Nature Magazine’s Max Koslov, who falsely implied NIH was transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in research monies to the Department of War (DOW). Koslov also erred in misreporting that NIH maintains a biodefense research portfolio, even though NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced that he was cutting NIH’s biodefense portfolio in an essay last January.

Ironically, Bhattacharya’s essay appeared in Nature Medicine, a journal published by Koslov’s own employer.

“Koslov is a fiction writer,” said an exasperated HHS official. “Absolute fiction. Our comms people at NIH don’t respond to him because he lies.”

DOW released the interagency agreement with NIH on Friday, which shows no money has been transferred to NIH. The agreement was signed in early August by Bhattacharya and Robert Kadlec, a physician and former CIA officer who wrote most of our biodefense laws while working for several decades as a congressional staffer. Kadlec is now an assistant secretary at DOW in charge of counterterrorism and biodefense.

According to HHS and NIH officials, who have negotiated the agreement with Kadlec since February, Kadlec asked NIH to transfer the $2 billion allocated to NIH for biodefense over to DOW. NIH denied this request, although DOW officials have continued to press the $2 billion matter in private discussions.

The agreement allows two types of cooperation. One is called 7600A which lists the rules and terms for cooperation on a project, while a 7600B allows transfer of funds as payment. NIH has not signed any 7600Bs, and an official negotiating with DOW said NIH doesn’t have any dollars to transfer to the Pentagon, because the money is already spent.

“The money on emerging infectious diseases is booked up for years in advance with contracts and grants,” said the NIH staffer.

Part of the confusion stems from conflicting definitions and terminology deployed over the last two decades by Tony Fauci while he ran the biodefense program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

As reported by Ashley Rindsberg in UnHerd, Fauci began the NIH’s biodefense program in 2003 with billions of dollars directed to him by Vice President Dick Cheney, following an increase in biodefense spending after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001. This moved biodefense for the first time out of Pentagon oversight, while providing Fauci direct access to the White House and a $2 billion pot of money each year since.

But over succeeding decades Fauci began mixing the dollars designated for biodefense with programs targeted at other infectious diseases – eroding the distinction between public health research and scientific studies for biodefense. “Fauci spread the bioterrorism money into programs on emerging diseases,” said the NIH official. “The reality is there’s no $2 billion to give.”

A senior Trump appointee who has worked with Bhattacharya and Kadlec to hammer out the agreement said that DeLauro is right to ask hard questions, which NIH needs to answer. But after the COVID pandemic mess, NIH is not the place to run bioterror research. “Look, everyone in this field knows that Kadlec is an operator,” said the Trump official. “But Kadlec is an experienced hand and we need aggressive oversight on this research.”

Referring to NIH money Fauci directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he added, “What was the point of NIAID funding a BSL-4 lab in a foreign country? Nobody has explained that.”

For the last three decades, Kadlec has labored to counter biological weapons for an alphabet soup of various agencies – JSOC, DOD, CIA, DHS, and the UN. Kadlec also wrote the critical legislation that undergirds America’s biodefense infrastructure while a staffer for Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Now the country’s leading biodefense lobbyist at DLA Piper, Burr represents the University of North Carolina and sits on the board of READDI, a North Carolina biodefense company founded by virologist Ralph Baric.

In a 2023 interview with The DisInformation Chronicle, Kadlec pointed to a 2015 virus study published by Ralph Baric and funded by Fauci as evidence that the virology community had been dishonest with the American public about the scientific evidence that the pandemic started from a lab. Fauci and others, Kadlec said, served as a “cabal” to bury this evidence in an “information operation.”

Last April, I reported for RealClearInvestigations that the NIH had yanked all of Baric’s grants after determining that his research helped create the COVID virus. UNC put Baric on leave and he retired from the university in June.

“We gave Fauci billions and he burned the house down,” said the Trump official working with NIH and DOW. “The world was on fire for two years and millions died. And if Democrats want the NIH to remain in the biodefense business, I wish them luck on selling voters on that.”

A senior HHS official said it remains unclear how much money might eventually migrate over to DOW but it won’t be anywhere near $2 billion as biodefense research is now gone from NIH’s portfolio. Nonetheless, NIH faces an uphill battle convincing Congress that they are no longer in the biodefense game.

After determining it was biodefense research and unsafe for Americans, NIH dissolved an $82 million Fauci initiative last June called the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID). CREID grantees included Peter Daszak of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research. But earlier this year, lobbyists inserted language into an appropriations bill that forces NIH to spend $18.2 million to fund CREID centers once again.

“We’re not funding Kristian Andersen and that virologist crew,” said the senior HHS official. “We’re out of biodefense, and that CREID money will go to people looking at infectious diseases in public health.”

Patrick Clancy, the father of three children killed by his former wife, Lindsay Clancy, inside the family’s Duxbury, Massachusetts, home in January 2023, is now the target of an online harassment campaign built on the false claim that he was involved in their deaths.

The claim has no foundation. Lindsay Clancy confessed. She never disputed killing her three children. Her defense spent the trial arguing she wasn’t criminally responsible because of severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, while prosecutors countered that she knew what she was doing. 

Nobody on either side of that courtroom argued Patrick did it or was involved in any way. However, that inconvenient fact hasn’t stopped supporters of Lindsay Clancy from claiming otherwise.

On Tuesday, Attorney Howard Cooper of Todd & Weld, who represents Patrick Clancy, issued a statement addressing what he described as a coordinated harassment effort.

“Over the past months, Patrick Clancy and his family have been subjected to a relentless, escalating and destructive defamation campaign,” Cooper said.

Cooper placed the blame on a familiar cast of characters.

He pointed to “minor celebrities, so-called influencers and outright conspiracy theorists” who found a payday spreading false claims about a grieving father, seemingly untroubled by the fact that his ex-wife already admitted to the killings.

The harassment hasn’t slowed since Friday’s mistrial, either. Cooper said it has only intensified, “now fueled by insatiable media coverage” and sitting “at a fever pitch,” with real threats to Patrick’s reputation, livelihood and life.

Somewhere in the online ecosystem that turned Lindsay Clancy into a folk hero for a certain strain of aggrieved women, a father who buried three children became the villain of his own tragedy, at least according to those sympathetic to his ex-wife.

Cooper said Patrick’s aim is stopping the harassment, holding the people spreading it accountable, and getting back to preserving the memory of Cora, Dawson and Callan while supporting other women navigating perinatal mental health crises. The irony belongs to nobody except his accusers.

“Enough is enough—this spread of blatant and baseless falsehoods must stop,” Cooper said. “Those responsible should understand that there will be consequences, and every appropriate measure will be pursued to hold them accountable, including legally.” Cooper confirmed he has already notified law enforcement.

The mistrial occurred because the jury could not agree on whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for the deaths after one juror held out for a verdict that would have found Clancy criminally responsible. District Attorney Tim Cruz still has the option to retry the case, and prosecutors have considered a retrial at a later date. However, Cruz has not given any definite timeline after the court announced the mistrial.

Patrick Clancy sat through much of that trial as the prosecution’s first witness. He described the day his children were murdered, his former wife’s mental collapse in the weeks before, and the moment he came home with food and medicine to find his children gone. None of that has translated into sympathy from the people now targeting him. 

Attorney David Meier, also of Todd & Weld, issued his own statement after the mistrial, striking a different tone than the online mob. “Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance,” Meier said. “The loss of Patrick’s children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful.”

Patrick has said before that he forgives Lindsay, calling her ill instead of evil, a distinction that seems to matter to no one running the harassment campaign against him. 

Authored by Mary Prenon via The Epoch Times,

Just as “The Obsolete Man,” which aired in 1961, depicted a future society in which technology had rendered certain professions obsolete, a recent survey showed that, as AI reshapes the workplace, most U.S. workers fear becoming obsolete in the future workforce and believe developing new skills is essential to job security.

While many workers attributed their fear of obsolescence to a lack of skill with the latest technologies, some hiring and workforce professionals said building interpersonal skills is increasingly critical, especially at a time when many young people are living in a digital world.

ETS, a global nonprofit educational testing and measurement organization, reported that 54 percent of U.S. workers felt underprepared for the next generation of jobs in the coming decade, compared with 49 percent globally. Meanwhile, 75 percent said they have no clear indication of what those jobs will entail in 2035.

This uncertainty, in turn, is accompanied by fears of obsolescence, with 58 percent of those surveyed saying they fear becoming obsolete in the future workforce. The figure rises to 74 percent among technology workers and 73 percent among those in financial services.

“The reasons workers give are consistent across markets: they lack experience with emerging technologies such as AI, automation or data tools. Many also report limited hands-on exposure to innovative systems that are becoming central to modern work,” ETS stated.

Some workers also feared that their newly acquired skills could become obsolete almost as quickly as they learn them, the report said.

Nevertheless, 78 percent of U.S. workers said there will be no job security without constant adaptation, while 85 percent said developing new skills will be necessary.

According to a March report from the International Monetary Fund, demand for new and digital skills is increasing, with one in 10 job postings in advanced economies and one in 20 in emerging markets requiring at least one new skill.

Ireland, Finland, and Denmark ranked as the top three countries in the organization’s Skill Readiness Index, combining high shares of tech graduates with strong adult literacy and retraining systems. The United States ranked ninth among the 23 countries analyzed.

Barriers

However, many barriers, including time, cost, access, and employer support, are limiting workers’ ability to pursue adaptation, ETS stated.

The report indicated that 71 percent of those surveyed were proactively developing new skills, falling short of the global average of 77 percent.

“U.S. workers are taking stock and waiting for clearer guidance, especially from governments, employers and educators,” the report said.

Research from Blu Ivy Group, a Canadian employer brand and recruitment marketing company with offices in Michigan, indicates U.S. businesses spent $102.8 billion on employee training in 2025, but many failed to provide additional time for training, according to Stacy Parker, the company’s cofounder and managing director.

“The biggest problem we see is that in many cases, employees are expected to participate in this training on evenings and weekends,” she told The Epoch Times. “They are so busy with different projects at work and are not given any time during the day to complete the training.”

Parker noted that in other countries, employee training is integrated into the workday.

“While North American companies tend to treat training as an HR [human resources] initiative, other nations see it as part of their competitiveness strategy,” she said. “Managers need to have accountability for developing people alongside technology.”

Meanwhile, Devin Hornick, cofounder and partner at KORE1, an Irvine, California-based nationwide staffing and workforce management company, said another reason U.S. workers lag behind their global counterparts is that they fail to discuss job expectations with their managers.

“In the U.S., the relationship between the growth of an employee’s skills in the workplace, combined with a career and income increase, is not clear, and employees will prioritize simply surviving the work week,” he told The Epoch Times.

Hornick added that unless an employer makes the relationship clear with a specific developmental career path, employees will not make the time to invest in developing a new skill. The issue can become more complicated, he said, when a company does not provide paid time off for employees to participate in training. Other companies do not cover the cost of training, and some do not offer training, Hornick said.

“Most professionals I place don’t have the bandwidth to take on additional responsibilities and build new skills,” he said.

“If there’s no budget set aside for employee development, that means there’s little to no value placed on training by employers and that results in the disconnect.”

Real-Life Skills Over Technology

Stacey Cohen, president and CEO of Co-Communications, a New York-based marketing and public relations agency, believes that job readiness should start as early as high school.

The author of two “Brand Up” books that guide high school and college students in personal branding techniques, Cohen stresses the need to develop interpersonal skills – even more than AI skills – to create career opportunities.

“It’s not just about knowing the latest technology,” she told The Epoch Times.

“What employers are looking for today are durable skills like communication, critical thinking, collaboration, relationship building, and problem-solving. Employees need to be adaptable, and this is becoming more critical than ever.”

Reviewing her own children’s high school curriculum, Cohen noticed a void in interpersonal skill development.

“They were teaching things like yoga and photography, but why not interviewing and leadership skills?” she said.

“Textbooks can prepare you for a test, but to succeed in the workplace you need a different set of skills.”

One factor affecting today’s teens’ ability to develop interpersonal skills is that they live in a digital world, she said.

“They text all the time and don’t necessarily have to speak to another human,” she said. “Even at the grocery store, you can choose the self-check-out lines instead of human cashiers.”

Cohen believes it’s never too early to teach young people these durable skills, such as using their own judgment, anticipating what people need, and learning the value of customer service.

“Even early part-time jobs like waiting tables require these types of skills,” she said.

Cohen noted that the hotel industry devotes considerable time to onboarding new employees. This intense orientation and training program reviews every aspect of guest relations, from initial greetings to problem-solving.

Cohen said businesses should adopt a similar onboarding method to not only create a smooth job transition but prepare employees for how the job may change over the next decade.

Erin DeVito, general manager of North America for Impact, a global learning and development firm, works with both executive leadership and employees to support and improve workplace dynamics.

“Even leadership is scrambling and trying to keep up with changing business strategies today,” she told The Epoch Times.

“The key is to help people develop skills of adaptability so they can shift, change, and learn new things. What worked years before may not be working now.”

DeVito and her team work with businesses of all types, industries, and sizes, offering customized leadership and team development, as well as coaching and other services. She said sometimes the solution can be as simple as encouraging coworkers to talk with each other instead of emailing.

“When we rely on email and text, we lose human connectedness,” she said. “While we’re all embracing emerging technologies like AI, sitting underneath those are real-life skills.”

DeVito used the example of her daughter, who was spending too much time texting on her phone and began to exhibit changes in her behavior.

“I took the phone away and put in a landline,” she said. “After just a day, she was talking with people and started acting like herself again.”

She eventually gave the phone back to her daughter, but with time-use restrictions.

Bridging the Gap

Hornick believes American workers can bridge the gap between the skills they bring to the table now and what will be expected in the next decade by setting the stage early enough with their immediate supervisors.

“I tell most of my candidates this: meet with your manager to find out what capabilities the company will need in the next 12 to 18 months and request a stipend, certification program, or protected time to develop those skills,” he said.

“If the employer will not invest, look at low-cost, credentialed resources that are recognized in your field. Waiting for the perfect comprehensive program is how people fall further behind.”

Parker said there’s still a “real paradox” with leadership in their ability to provide clarity when so much transformation is happening.

“Organizations are in continuous change and redirection, and often, employees have less confidence about where the company is headed and what will happen to their jobs,” she said. “Sometimes they think their jobs will be eliminated, but the company may actually have retraining in mind.”

In her experience, Parker has seen technology, corporate retail, and business-to-business firms undergo the most change and reshuffling.

“Employees often are burdened with heavy workloads, businesses are sometimes understaffed, and promotion pathways can be unclear,” she said.

As business leaders strive to find the best solutions, DeVito encourages both leadership and employees to learn as much as they can from everyone around them.

“It’s also important that leaders be honest when they don’t have all the answers,” she said.

The global push toward electrification carries several risks, including replacing dependence on foreign oil and natural gas with reliance on Chinese technology and critical materials, as access to cheap electricity dictates investment flows and where AI and industrial bases thrive.

Christian Keller, Barclays’ global head of economics research, co-authored a note Tuesday on how rapidly accelerating geopolitical fragmentation and surging power demand are rewiring the global economy. He argued that countries must secure traditional fuel supplies while investing heavily in electricity generation, grids and storage.

Keller identified China’s near-total control of more than 95% of critical material refining in areas such as heavy rare earths as a major vulnerability for countries dependent on those supplies.

Critical materials whose mining or refining China controls are critical inputs for electricity infrastructure, industrial production, the upcoming rearmament cycle, and the AI data center buildout. Replacing Chinese supplies requires far more than discovering new deposits and will take years. 

For the West, building competitive supply chains outside China, from mining critical materials such as tungsten to refining rare earths and manufacturing magnets, will be extraordinarily difficult and time-consuming. China’s dominance in the space is expected to persist through at least 2030 despite ongoing Western efforts to diversify.

“China’s quasi-monopolistic position provides it with significant geopolitical leverage,” Keller warned.

A Reuters report late last week revealed that some Chinese rare-earth suppliers were refusing to ship materials to US customers. The report suggests supply disruptions remain a major issue ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting scheduled for later this month.

Here is Keller’s warning for the West: 

Negotiating critical minerals supply chains

Electrification is only likely to advance as a global trend. Especially in energy-importing countries, being key for achieving energy sovereignty (next to lowering carbon emissions). In turn, that transition towards an electricity-dominated system is contingent on critical minerals (Transition minerals: unearthing opportunities from a $500bn supercycle). However, the global reserves of these minerals are often concentrated in certain locations: eg, lithium (over 30% in Chile), cobalt (over 50% in DR of Congo), nickel (over 40% in Indonesia). Moreover, the degree of processing is often crucial, potentially also making small reserves valuable, if fully processed.

In this context, China plays a crucial role, given its tight control over the global critical mineral supply chain and refining capacity, including graphite, gallium and rare earths (Figure 10 & Figure 11). China’s quasi-monopolistic position provides it with significant geopolitical leverage. Other countries also use export controls for minerals where they have dominant positions to gain strategic leverage, eg, Indonesia with nickel and bauxite.

Hence, critical minerals will likely play central roles in international negotiations about trade or geopolitical settlements. The US tariff concession to Beijing in order to retain access to rare earths and its plan to build its own rare earth mining and refining capacities are likely only the beginning . Efforts to re-shore minerals mining and refining capacity are also likely to take time, as shown by the persistent concentration of value chains projected out to 2030 (Figure 12). Potential conflicts over critical minerals access in some of the already unstable African regions are also likely. Australia could play an increasingly important role, given its abundance and diversity of reserves in critical minerals and rare earths.

The key complement to resources in the ground are the capital flows to provide the necessary financing. Here, capital-rich advanced economies such as those in Europe could try to increase their role. However, as Figure 13 and Figure 14 show, despite the industrial strategy efforts of governments in the West, building out a comprehensive and cost-effective ‘mine to magnet’ value chain decoupled from China is extremely difficult and likely to take time.

Overall, economic statecraft involved in securing critical mineral supply chains will become a mix of export controls, foreign investment restrictions, access to foreign capital, and sanctions, possibly project-focused and with changing alliances.

Keller’s warning underscores why we’ve made China decoupling a core investment theme, building on our nuclear theme, AI buildout, and powering up America themes, highlighting companies such as MP Materials and Almonty as the West races to secure alternative critical material supplies.

Breaking Beijing’s “quasi-monopolistic” grip will require operating mines, processing capacity, and reliable deliveries. Many junior miners still face years of permitting, financing and construction before producing their first commercial shipments. Companies that can bring supply online sooner could capture a crucial early market advantage, such as Almonty’s ex-China tungsten production ramping up in South Korea. 

Jefferies initiates critical mineral companies Almonty, Materion, USA Rare Earth and Neo Performance with Buy; the firms are expected to benefit from increased demand for supply outside of China.

Almonty (buy, PT $26.25)

Sees Almonty offering public exposure to Western tungsten…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 2, 2026

The SPDR S&P Metals & Mining ETF (XME) has yet to confirm another breakout but certaintly coiling. 

Related:

• Ukraine’s Drone Warfare Devouring 4% Of Global Germanium Demand As China Chokes Supplies

For readers, the decoupling theme is about identifying miners already producing and able to close the supply gap. The opportunity lies in who can deliver first in size.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

China has paused approvals for new battery storage factories amid a review of existing and planned capacity, Chinese financial news outlet Cailianshe reported this weekend, citing industry sources.

The temporary suspension of approvals of plants that have not started construction yet comes amid growing concerns about overcapacity in the sector in the world’s biggest manufacturer of batteries for energy storage.

China is the world’s biggest market for electric vehicles and a top player in battery storage as well. But just like electric vehicles (EVs) and solar panels, these energy transition-linked industries have enjoyed years of generous subsidies that have allowed them to grow without any consideration of overcapacity and its consequences. The Chinese government has already had to clamp down on EVs and solar panels, and now, it seems, it’s the turn of batteries.

In addition, Chinese solar equipment manufacturers have diversified into battery storage to tackle a chronic oversupply in the panel and equipment market that has crashed many sector players’ bottom lines.

The surge in EVs and solar and wind power installations has resulted in excessive manufacturing capacity in these key non-hydrocarbon energy industries, igniting price wars that have hurt most companies in the sector, including the biggest solar panel manufacturers. Chinese authorities realized last year that cutthroat competition, overcapacity, and low-quality manufacturing are hurting enterprises.

The battery storage boom in China is now threatening this industry, too, and China’s authorities have started to take measures to curb unrestrained growth.

In July, China’s Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Taxation Administration announced that China would launch consumption taxes on batteries effective September 1, 2026.

Mercury-free primary batteries, nickel-metal hydride batteries, lithium primary batteries, lithium-ion batteries, and all-vanadium redox flow batteries will be taxed at 2% from September 2026 and at 4% from September 2027. Photovoltaic cells will face a 2% tax from April 2027 and 4% from April 2028.

China exempted new-technology batteries from the tax until December 2028. These include sodium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries, fuel cells, and advanced photovoltaic types such as perovskite, tandem and gallium arsenide cells.