“There Is Going To Be A Problem” - Metal Shortage Could Last Decades | Ian Harris

Liberty and Finance Aug 10, 2026

Summary

Copper faces a structural deposit problem — finding and permitting new mines can take 20+ years from discovery to production.

Demand drivers stack up: electrification, EVs, AI data centers, and digitalization all pull on the same constrained supply.

Copper now behaves like a strategic resource, with governments and majors scrambling to secure supply ahead of projected shortfalls.

Copper Giant closed a $31M financing with a Trafigura-linked offtake, giving it a two-year runway to a construction decision.

A pro-mining president takes office in Colombia the same day, removing the project's biggest perceived jurisdictional risk.

First Majestic Silver's CEO previously appeared alongside Rick Rule on Liberty and Finance to argue a massive metals shortage is coming, a discussion the host cites as anchoring the show's copper thesis.
Host Dunagun Kaiser says the prior First Majestic Silver interview is when the channel's long-running metal-shortage narrative came into sharp focus.

Denarius Metals participated in Copper Giant's just-closed $31 million financing alongside Trafigura, which took a 20% offtake for 10 years at market on the project.
Ian Harris frames the Denarius/Trafigura deal as a strategic-partner signal that validates Copper Giant's Colombia asset.

Top takeaway Host Dunagun Kaiser frames the show around a long-running copper supply-gap narrative, anchoring it in a Financial Times copper shortfall projection with a roughly 20-year look-forward horizon.
Kaiser argues copper's refusal to pull back with gold, combined with a copper-to-NASDAQ ratio at a bottom, signals a rotation from overvalued equities into commodities that is starting to play out.

Top takeaway Tavi Costa is credited by the host with two charts: a copper-versus-gold ratio showing copper refusing to pull back, and a copper-versus-NASDAQ ratio sitting at a bottom that the host reads as a rotation signal.
Costa's Bloomberg-based chart of gold-miner-to-gold-price multiples is also cited as evidence that a multi-year undervaluation is breaking out, which Kaiser extends to copper equities.

Top takeaway Ian Harris argues the copper shortage is a deposit problem, not a processing problem: even with $2 trillion to spend, a new copper project still takes roughly 20 years from discovery to come online.
Harris says copper demand now stacks three drivers — electrification (90% of historical demand), the energy transition, and AI/digitalization — making the metal behave more like oil in strategic importance.
On Copper Giant, Harris says the company passed a billion tons last November, has four drills running, and is targeting a first PEA by year-end to give the market a clear NPV-based valuation marker.
Harris frames the just-closed $31 million financing — Trafigura 20% offtake for 10 years plus insider lockups for two years — as giving Copper Giant enough capital to reach a construction decision regardless of market conditions.
Harris argues being early in a copper bull matters because late entrants risk missing the window where mines can actually get financed and built, and Colombia's political window for new mines is reopening now.

Top takeaway Frank Giustra is described as Copper Giant's largest and most vocal shareholder at roughly 15%, with a track record cited across Gold Corp, Silver Wheaton, Silver Precious Metals, and Deavor.
Harris quotes Giustra's investment rule — "don't buy what the government tells you to buy, buy what the government is buying" — to argue governments and first-mover companies are positioning into copper.