Minerals will be front and center today on Capitol Hill with the House Select Committee on China holding a hearing on China's Predatory Pricing, exploring How Beijing Manipulates Global Mineral Prices to Maintain its minerals dominance.

And China and minerals are also the focus in Brussels where U.S.-E.U. cooperation on the minerals challenge is giving way to competition. The Financial Times reports the European Union plans to set up a central authority to coordinate buying and stockpiling of critical minerals. An EU official says the union has become "collateral damage" in the U.S.-China dispute over rare earths and needs to begin stockpiling to keep the U.S. from securing supplies "under our noses."

And yesterday, the Department of Energy announced it finalized a $1 billion conditional loan commitment to Constellation Energy to support efforts to restart the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant. The power generated will be sold to Microsoft to support data center development under a 20-year deal. The Trump administration is a strong proponent of nuclear power and has vowed to quadruple U.S. nuclear generation by 2050, reinforcing the need to ramp up domestic uranium production.

Finally, soaring power demand, including from data centers and the electrification of the economy, could contribute to energy supply shortfalls this winter during biting cold, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. warned on Tuesday in its latest winter reliability assessment.