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At a time when global markets are trembling under the weight of Donald Trump’s new wave of tariffs, Japan is riding high on a game-changing discovery from the deep sea. In 2024, researchers from the University of Tokyo, in partnership with the Nippon Foundation, stumbled upon a rare bounty in the seabed near Minami-Tori-shima—an isolated island over 1,800 kilometers from Tokyo.
Buried beneath the ocean floor: an estimated 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel—both essential components in electric vehicle (EV)…
