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Spare a thought for Syrah Resources (ASX:SYR) shareholders who on Friday have been caught out as the latest victims of that most curious vicissitude of our modern era: an apparently bipolar US President.
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Up until this morning, apparently, the US had been planning on placing tariffs on Chinese graphite exports in a familiar move from the ex-China critical minerals supply chain policy-thematic-momentum chimera.
But now that’s changed. Trump has said the US will not be placing tariffs on Chinese graphite exports, which is curious timing if you’re naive. In between the lines, this is an obvious move informed by caution as the US appears to be grappling with how to pretend it saw the consequences of its attacks on Iran coming.
I spent a lot of time last year and even this year writing how oil traders were overreacting to the prospect of a war in Iran, given that the US is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas in 2026.
Of course, Iran went above and beyond what anybody thought it would do, attacking pretty much every single one of its neighbours in the Middle East, including bombing its neighbours’ energy infrastructure, which then led other companies to mothball operations in the regions. No lights on, harder to justify bombing.
Then Iran placed mines in the Strait of Hormuz and began attacking vessels not directly linked to China or Russia trying to navigate the Strait. Countries who evict US and Israeli ambassadors are welcome, which is obviously like being in between a rock and a hard place for countries considering such an (unlikely) move.
Iran knows what it’s doing. The US can see that. And what Trump has clearly decided is that right now he doesn’t need to ratchet up the tension of anything else right now (despite the fact the US has launched fresh trade probes into multiple countries Trump’s always been fixated on.)
So, a rare show of diplomacy from Trump, perhaps. But like everything else this deliberately provocative President does, there’s been an unsuspecting victim – ASX-listed Syrah Resources.
The dominos fall in a way that’s probably straightforward to anybody who’s been paying attention in recent history.
Syrah’s potential to become a new supplier to the US (and Western World) of graphite products – used in everything from EV batteries to industrial smelting crucibles (and yes, pencils!) – had been a going point of hope. That now appears to be dashed.
To be fair, Syrah is well off its October 2025 peak above 50cps around when the Trump-Albo meeting happened and there was critical metals fever in Q3/Q4 of CY25. The stock isn’t amazingly liquid and graphite bulls are even longer-suffering than those for uranium.
But with this latest move, a return to 50cps looks even less likely anytime soon.
SYR last traded at 18.3cps.
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