Event Summary
The New Year's Day holiday in China has not yet ended. On January 3rd, US President Trump said that the US has successfully launched an attack on Venezuela, capturing Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife and taking them out of Venezuela. President Trump gave a phone interview to the media and held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago. During the meeting, he straightforwardly stated that the United States would control Venezuela in the future and also take control of Venezuela's largest oil reserves in the world. According to Statista, Venezuela has about 300 billion barrels of oil reserves, accounting for nearly one fifth of the global total of this resource. Venezuela's oil reserves are not only greater than those of the oil kingdom Saudi Arabia, but also nearly 6.7 times that of the United States. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was deeply shocked by the recent escalation of the situation in Venezuela. The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 10 a.m. local time on January 5th regarding the US military operation against Venezuela.
Nonferrous metals sector: Geopolitical conflicts have restructured resource security, and supply risks may push up metal prices
Venezuela is rich in mineral resources. Its bauxite reserves rank among the top in the world, accounting for about 1-2% of the global total. Other metallic minerals include nickel, vanadium, titanium, copper, manganese, chromium, lead and zinc, etc.
From the most direct perspective of the physical supply chain of bauxite, this incident itself is unlikely to pose a substantive impact. Although Venezuela has approximately 3.48 billion tons of bauxite resources and ranks among the top in the world in terms of proven reserves, its aluminum industry has long developed slowly, with both production and export volumes remaining at extremely low levels. According to customs data, China did not import bauxite or electrolytic aluminum products from Venezuela between 2024 and 2025. Therefore, even if the local situation is unstable and production is completely disrupted, it will have almost no direct impact on the world, especially on China.
However, the incident may trigger multiple indirect impacts. From the perspective of supply and demand of goods, since 2025, the United States has been promoting the return of manufacturing to its home country by imposing additional import tariffs and signing trade agreements, which has led to a series of geopolitical conflicts and seriously affected the stability of the supply of commodity resources such as non-ferrous metals. The United States' direct intervention in the regime change of a resource-rich country through military operations and its control over its key resources itself sends a strong signal to all resource-rich and consuming countries around the world that the security of the critical mineral supply chain has been linked to geopolitics. in the future pricing of global resource products, there may be more geopolitical factors in the price (we believe that this factor has already been reflected in the 25-year increase of base metals). In the face of trade frictions and the trend of "anti-globalization", consumer countries such as the United States and the European Union have been increasing their strategic reserves of key mineral resources to reduce their reliance on foreign countries. Under the dual constraints of supply shocks and strategic demand reserves, the prices of non-ferrous metals such as copper and aluminum are more likely to rise than fall.
Under the policy framework of the United States seeking security in the supply chain of critical minerals, Venezuela may not be the end of its policy goals. Other resource-rich and strategically significant countries/regions may also become the targets of the United States' attacks in the future, especially Latin America, which is relatively close to the US mainland. In December 2025, the Trump administration's second term released a new version of the National Security Strategy Report, explicitly putting forward the "Monroe Doctrine Trump Inference", listing the Western Hemisphere as a priority region. The United States may strengthen its control over Latin America through military pressure, economic coercion and immigration control. Latin America is rich in mineral resources. For instance, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile possess approximately 60% of the world's lithium resources, while Chile and Peru hold about 30% of the global copper resources. Brazil has around 23% of the world's rare earth resources. It is not ruled out that the United States will continue to seize control of key infrastructure and resources in Latin America in the future to establish the Americas as its sphere of influence. Therefore, in the context of "anti-globalization", geopolitical unrest will continue to disrupt the stability of the supply of non-ferrous metal mineral resources and push up the metal risk premium.
From the perspective of the financial attributes of resource products, the Venezuelan incident may drive up market risk aversion in the short term. As a response to geopolitical risks, funds may flow into the non-ferrous metals and precious metals sectors such as copper and aluminum for hedging, thereby pushing up the prices of non-ferrous metals in the short term at the financial level. In the medium and long term, the unilateral military intervention by the United States will exacerbate the credit crisis of the US dollar, accelerate the settlement trend of global non-US dollar currencies, and the US dollar index is likely to remain weak, which will also support the prices of non-ferrous metals.
In addition, this incident also has a potential impact on the strategic investment of China's non-ferrous metal industry in going global. Take aluminium as an example. Although the current trade volume between China and Venezuela in the aluminium industry chain is small, it remains a potential strategic resource cooperation zone for Chinese enterprises. For instance, Chinalco has previously conducted in-depth contact and cooperation discussions with the Venezuelan government and local enterprises regarding the upgrading of the aluminum industry. The current huge policy continuity risks and asset security uncertainties may force Chinese aluminum enterprises to reevaluate their investment logic in similar politically sensitive regions.
