In our latest episode, I spoke with Erik Olson, President of Venn Strategies and spokesperson for the North American Graphite Alliance (NAGA), and Ben Steinberg, Principal at Venn Strategies and President of the Battery Materials & Technology Coalition (BMTC).

The active anode material AD/CVD petition would have delivered combined duties north of 160% against Chinese imports and fundamentally reshaped the economics of North American anode production.

We unpack what happened, why it fell apart, and what comes next.

We cover:

• The closed-door ITC vote: the initial 3-0 in favour, the return to the room, and then the 2-1 reversal
• What the decision signals about cheap imports weakening the market and cutting around the administration's broader trade agenda
• The fundamental challenge of protecting an industry that isn't yet fully established - and why traditional trade remedy frameworks struggle with emerging sectors
• The strategic path forward: still early days, but a wide range of tools remain on the table
• Price floors and ring-fencing as a mechanism, and why Ben sees this as one of the more interesting levers worth exploring
• BTR Indonesia and the wider question of Chinese circumvention through third countries, FEOC enforcement by the DOE
• Timing and sequencing: how the toolkit can be layered over the next several months
• The wider challenge of financing capital-intensive industries in the West when competing against state-backed Chinese capacity
• Demand-pull mechanisms and why supply-side support alone won't get the industry across the line
• "Project Vault” - a private sector initiative pairing trading houses with buyers like Lockheed Martin and GM to build a 60-day stockpile of graphite and other critical materials, supported by $2bn in private commitments and a $10bn EXIM loan
• The chicken-and-egg problem of qualification
• Why the industry needs to start pricing supply chain security - Section 45X and the way graphite is treated - not entirely fair, but a trade-off worth understanding
• End-market outlook across defence (small volumes but strategically critical), EVs, and grid storage
• Why both Erik and Ben remain optimistic about the industry's trajectory

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