UPDATE: Democratic Republic of the Congo has banned exports of copper and cobalt concentrates. 🇨🇩 Congo sits on an estimated 24 trillion dollars in mineral wealth, including the cobalt and copper that power nearly every phone and electric car on Earth. 😯 It holds roughly 71 percent of the world’s proven cobalt reserves and dominates global production of both cobalt and copper, minerals now essential to batteries, electronics, and modern militaries. Congo is still one of the five poorest nations on the planet. In 2025, hoping to capture more of that value at home, Congo banned exports of raw cobalt. The goal was to force mining companies to process minerals locally instead of shipping them out unrefined. Eight months later, the government replaced the ban with strict yearly export quotas. But the policy has not worked cleanly.(Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial)