Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil’s presidential runoff on Sunday 25 October, beating Senator Flávio Bolsonaro with about 52% of the vote. His fourth term, starting 5 January 2027, keeps in place a critical minerals policy that raises a question for the rare earths market: who will process Brazil’s ore? Brazil holds the world’s second-largest rare earth reserves after China, and Benchmark forecasts mine output to almost triple by 2032 from 5,000 tonnes today. Yet there is no domestic refining until 2030 and only small volumes of light rare earths after that.

Big Tech’s nuclear ambitions are starting to impact uranium demand. Volumes are small but growing in a market where mined supply already falls short. On 6 October, Google signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation, funding more than USD $4.3 billion of upgrades across 11 units in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to add 890MW. It also signed a 15-year deal for 2,700MW from existing plants. On 19 October, Amazon, AEP and X-energy agreed to study a 960MW, 12-reactor plant using the advanced Xe-100 design at a former Indiana coal site, ahead of any final investment decision.

Canada’s fleet average emission standards for passenger cars and light-duty vehicles will remain frozen until 2029 at 172g of CO2 per mile. The strength of the standards will begin to increase from 2030 as Canada targets 75% of new vehicle sales being electric vehicles by 2035, which it says will be equivalent to fleet average emissions of 74g of CO2 per mile. 

Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister, and Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, have committed to investing CAD 8.7 billion (USD 6.2 billion) into Ontario’s automotive and steel industries, as well as its critical mineral supply chain. The investment comes accompanied by various policies across the three sectors that aim at supporting their economic growth amid Canada’s weakened trade relationship with the US.