TD’s Daniel Ghali Says Global Markets Are Shifting Toward a Wartime Economy
How global stockpiles, trade wars, and critical minerals are reshaping the economy—and what it means for investors, industries, and national security.
The world’s economic landscape is shifting beneath our feet. At the center of it all is a silent scramble for the metals that power everything from missiles to microchips. Daniel Ghali, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities, isn’t mincing words. “Every day, we’re inching closer to a wartime economy,” he told BNN Bloomberg. His message is loud and clear. Nations aren’t just reacting to global tensions—they’re actively stockpiling the resources they believe will determine who comes out on top.
This isn’t your grandfather’s commodity cycle. It’s a reordering of the world economy under the growing shadow of geopolitical rivalry. With China and the United States locked in an escalating trade war and trust in global trade mechanisms breaking down, countries are no longer relying on free markets to guarantee access to the raw materials they need. Instead, they’re hoarding them like a nation on the brink of war.
The Strategic Stockpiling Era
If you think supply chains are stabilizing after COVID, think again. Ghali points out that both the U.S. and China have adopted aggressive stockpiling strategies, draining global inventories of essential metals like copper, rare earths and other critical minerals. The U.S. is pulling metals in ahead of tariff deadlines while China is tightening export controls and boosting its own domestic reserves.
And it’s not just any metals. It’s the ones critical to national defense and high-tech innovation. From fighter jets to EV batteries, the future runs on a tight supply of specialty minerals, and both superpowers know it. This hoarding behavior is not random. It’s calculated. It’s strategic. And it’s creating tremors in commodity markets that investors can no longer ignore.
China’s Rare Earth Grip Tightens
Back in April, China threw another punch in the trade war, announcing it would suspend exports of a broad suite of rare earth elements and magnets. These materials are essential for everything from electric vehicles to guided missiles. The move sent shockwaves through Washington, Brussels and New Delhi. It wasn’t just about economics—it was a geopolitical power play with global ramifications.
Rare earth elements may sound niche, but they’re vital. Without them, there’s no green energy transition, no semiconductors, no next-gen defense systems. China knows its dominance in this sector is a strategic trump card, and it’s playing it with growing frequency. The West is finally catching on, but it’s years behind.
Copper: The New Battlefield Metal
Out of all the metals on the board, copper is emerging as the one to watch. It’s the backbone of electrification, and its applications stretch across renewable energy, construction and national defense. In early July, President Donald Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on copper imports set to take effect August 1. That’s a big move—one that catapulted copper prices to record highs.
What does it signal? Simple. The U.S. wants to revive its domestic copper mining industry and insulate itself from foreign supply shocks. This is industrial policy with a wartime edge, and it’s reshaping the fundamentals of the copper market. Prices are no longer being set just by supply and demand. They’re being set by politics.
The End of Global Market Efficiency
Ghali paints a sobering picture. “Ultimately, this is the end stage of the deglobalization narrative,” he says. Trade is no longer about efficiency. It’s about allegiance. About security. About who you trust in a world that’s dividing along economic and ideological lines.
In this new environment, commodity trading becomes slower, costlier and riskier. The days of fluid cross-border movement of raw materials are behind us. Now, supply chains are increasingly balkanized. Governments are stepping in, rewriting trade rules, imposing tariffs, building domestic reserves and using minerals as leverage.
The result? Higher prices. And not just temporarily. This isn’t a blip on the radar. It’s a structural shift. As Ghali puts it, “raw material prices have to reflect that.” Investors betting on a return to normalcy might be in for a rude awakening.
Markets Under Pressure
This new geopolitical reality is straining markets in ways we haven’t seen in decades. Inventories of many critical metals have dropped below the levels necessary for healthy market function. That’s not just an economic issue. It’s a strategic vulnerability.
Ghali warns that many metals are now trading in precarious conditions. One unexpected shock, one natural disaster, one political misstep and the system could tip. The fragility is real, and so are the implications for inflation, manufacturing and even national defense readiness.
Resource Nationalism Rises
What happens when every country wants the same metals but no one wants to rely on anyone else to get them? You get resource nationalism. Countries are locking down their mineral wealth, increasing royalties, imposing export bans and rewriting the rules of the game.
Whether it’s Indonesia restricting nickel exports, Mexico asserting state control over lithium or the U.S. funding domestic rare earth projects, the message is the same: national interest comes first. This isn’t just protectionism. It’s preparation.
The Shift Toward Security-Driven Economics
There was a time when national security was about tanks and missiles. Today, it’s about lithium and cobalt. Ghali’s perspective highlights this transition. The Western world is crafting mineral strategies not as a matter of industry planning, but as a matter of defense.
Governments are pouring billions into strategic stockpiles, supporting new mines and tightening control over resource supply chains. The global economy is being reshaped by a mindset that sees critical minerals as the front line in a new kind of cold war.
The New Rules of the Game
In this environment, investors, businesses and governments have to rethink how they approach commodities. Price forecasts need to account for geopolitical volatility. Supply chain strategies need to include redundancy and security. And economic models need to be updated to reflect a world where trade flows follow alliances, not arbitrage.
This isn’t the world we had in 2019. It’s a fragmented, multipolar landscape where power is measured in barrels, tonnes and gigawatts. And according to Ghali, we’re only at the beginning.
Conclusion: Prepare for the New Normal
Daniel Ghali’s message isn’t alarmist—it’s realistic. We’re heading toward a global economy shaped less by efficiency and more by fear, competition and security. Stockpiling isn’t a fluke. It’s policy. Tariffs aren’t temporary. They’re strategic tools. And critical minerals aren’t just valuable—they’re essential to survival.
For investors, this means embracing volatility and adapting fast. For policymakers, it means balancing national security with economic resilience. And for the public, it means understanding that the price of progress now includes the cost of geopolitical risk.
The wartime economy isn’t a hypothetical. It’s unfolding in real time. The question is, who’s ready?