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In May of 2026, the United States asked the Philippines for something almost no country has ever requested for. A really big plan to bring American business, jobs, investment, assistance, and so much more to the Filipino people. Malakanyang is defending the US-led PAX silica initiative amid backlash over its potential impact on the environment, local communities, and the country's national interest. groups at NGO. This was for a 4,000 acre farmland in Tarlac. What they asked for was diplomatic immunity. Manila said no publicly and within days something strange happened. The deal didn't stall. It actually sped up. And countries don't accelerate a deal after being told no unless the no never really mattered.
Now hold that question. Let's start with where we're at right now. This week, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in Manila and so is China's top diplomat in the same city, same days. Both superpowers courting the same country at the same time. As Billionaro's business 360 put it, the Philippines is squarely in the middle. Luzon Economic Corridor and then there's also the Pacilica. Lots happening. And the Philippines is also uh with the United States targeting a November signing of the new Clark City Framework Agreement. In November, the 49th ASEAN summit is here in Manila and it's time to the 80th anniversary of Philippine-American relations. Negotiations are supposed to wrap up in the next 2 to 3 months. Whatever this deal really is, it's going to get signed in front of the world.
But to understand why America wants the signature so badly, you have to leave Manila. Because the real story starts with a problem America has been spending 30 years failing to solve at home. This is Mountain Pass, California. For most of the 20th century, this single mine made America the world's rare earth superpower. the material inside magnets, missiles, and motors. America invented this industry. Then China did to rare earth what it would later do to nickel. Flood the market, crashed the price. And wait, by the 2000s, the entire industry had moved to China. In 2015, the company running Mountain Pass went bankrupt. The country that invented the industry was down to one mine and even its ore was being shipped to China for processing.
So we know that China and the US have been in this AI and arms trade war. US started by banning advanced chip sales from TSMC and Nvidia to China. China hits back and bans minerals like gallium, Germanmanium, and antimonia exports to the US. So watch how Washington responds to this recently. The Pentagon takes an ownership stake in MP materials. They're a US mining and processing company. And this type of deal is for a government is unprecedented. It guarantees a price floor of $110 a kilo for magnet metal that China was dumping in the market for half the price. Now even defense laws now phases in a ban on minerals mined or refined in China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. I want you to hear that again. The Pentagon is buying mining stocks and setting commodity price floors. That's not what military superpowers do, unless they're being pushed into a corner.
If you want proof that the Chinese playbook still works, here's nickel. Chinese funded Indonesian refineries and drove the price from 25,600 on average in 2022 to about 15,000 by last year. Now, independent processors can't survive open market prices, and that's by design. So, this has a name. Economists call it predatory pricing. I call it the China playbook. They dump the market with cheap supply and undercut everyone until they go bankrupt and then they own whatever's left or they dominate the market. It's how China built dominance in solar panels and steel and ship building. And then all of a sudden, China's economic advantage becomes its political edge. To Chinese manufacturers, this is just smart strategy. To us, it's playing dirty. And countries around the world suffer from this because we can't develop our own industries when there's no margins. That problem of people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers.
So America needs three things fast and at scale outside China's reach. They need allied dirt, allied processing, and allied factories. The only question was where. growing global recognition that we need to have supply chains for critical minerals that are reliable and diverse across the world. Some countries have a number of critical minerals that they have available to them in terms of mining but just haven't been able to do it because a foreign competitor will come in, they'll gut the price, they'll they'll undercut it through state subsidies and unfair practices and so it becomes economically unviable to be able to explore for critical minerals.
In December, Washington launched PAX Silica, a 13 nation supply chain alliance with the Philippines as its latest member for its very first physical project, an AI native industrial hub. They picked a stretch of grassland in Tarlac. And here's what the American Chamber executive director on what that actually means. Basically a chip to cloud lamps. I mean it's where you know we we really want to secure the semiconductor industries the focused on electronics goods etc. So but it's uh you know it's going to be you know it's tied into the own economic corridor. We can talk about that in a minute but I think it's chosen as one of the flagship sites for the United States. It's a great opportunity for Philippines. Of course it's to me it sounds like more you know we're trying to make sure that we got a supply chain security. We're Taiwan plus one. I don't think anything's going to leave Taiwan, but it's also good from a from a worldwide perspective to have a hub where we can put a uh extra supply chain operation here.
To put it plainly, PAX Silica is a US-led coalition that's securing AI semiconductor and critical mineral supply chains. And this is how it works. Instead of say writing blank checks to the Philippines government, it funnels private foreign capital into isolated economic zones. On July 13th, a coalition of scientists, environmentalists, and farmers marched towards the US embassy in Manila to oppose the proposed PAC silica AI hub in New York City. Protesters denounced the initiative over agricultural land displacement, heavy resource strain, and mining risks, calling the project a form of neoc colonialism that exploits local land and power without benefiting ordinary Filipinos. I actually believe Philippines has a better foundation for some of these companies that they're bringing in like Samsung. Yeah. So, they're bringing chip manufacturers like Samsung, but Philippines should probably be the better option because one, we have a younger population. Two, we have uh English proficiency all across the board here. And three, we're sitting on a mountain of mineral resources needed to supply all that stuff.
There are two American giants who are operating uh logistic business there. Just um two days ago or 3 days ago, we break ground for a huge uh sorting facility in Clark by FedEx. FedEx is coming back big time. They're going to build around close to 80,000 square meter of facility. And this year UPS is opening also a 30,000 hectare sorting facility.
Okay, let's look at this like an investor. Headline says PAX Silica is building an AI data center. But walk through this logic with me real quick. Why put power guzzling hubs in a country with some of the some of Asia's highest electricity rates, water shortages, and notorious red tape? Red tape so intense the US reportedly asked for legal immunity. Either this is a terrible business deal by people who don't make bad investments or data centers were never the main point. They asked about the availability of land. It's good that Clark has more than 10,000 of hectares of lands available and they asked for around 5,000 hectares but we told them we only have available for this kind of industrial development around 4,000 which the US government agreed to consider. They only asked for 2 years. So which we told them yes but on the third year moving forward they're going to start paying the rent. Even on separate wires, demanding an estimated 5,000 megawatts of power can drain the overall Luzon grid that notoriously lacks excess capacity. There is one island in this country that actually has more power than it uses, and it's not Luzon. I'll tell you more about this later.
Follow the money and the pattern is obvious. US funding is already backing a nickel processing study in Zambalis to bypass China alongside millions of cargo railway connecting Sububi to Patangas to haul critical minerals straight to deep water ports and AI data centers on the storefront. This mineral supply chain is the warehouse. Bonafasio global city. Bonafasio was a a rice field and it took him over a decade to build it into what it is today. Maybe almost 15 years. Now then we're talking about Clark subic batangas color zone and drilling it into something similar to what we did at BGC. This is a tremendous opportunity and that's the bull case real money turning rice fields into new skylines. But hold that image against the embassy protests. Both sides have valid points and both are reacting to the same problem. Nobody outside that room actually knows what this deal is really for.
Okay, if you just look at the 50 global companies looking to explore investments here, it'll tell you a lot. Foxcon, who's doing the due diligence, is the largest contract electronics manufacturer. They're a big part of the advanced chip supply chain. Collins Aerospace for the electronic system in missiles and weapons defense. And Cberus is a private equity for military bases like SubiC. You add private power grids, Pentagon sourcing laws, and security linked aid, and the pattern is clear. This is a new era of warfare fought with supply chains, microchips, and economic control. The Philippines is caught right in the middle of the US China tug-of-war. But being in the most strategic geographic location gives us a massive leverage to pull in huge capital and high-tech manufacturing. Because no matter how modern this warfare gets, it still runs on one thing, our dirt. way beyond the Marcus administration is going to vote for. You know, the thing that's interesting is that we have first time in 16 years. Every 16 years it happens. The United States elects a new a new president the same year the Philippines elects a new president. Australia's having elections and Taiwan's having elections in the 28. So all of these will play a part in this, but it'll be it's beyond the Marcos administration by far. I do think we have this year and a half to two years now opportunity to really seize the moment and make it institutionalized in the next so Marcus could have that as his uh part of his legacy.
America's material problems gets solved wherever allied dirt processing and factories come together. Now here's why that matters to us. China keeps this monopoly while we keep shipping away raw minerals instead of building real value. Until we have a true resource sovereignty and that means including the power to process our own materials and our own advanced manufacturing. The Philippines remains a bystander in the US China trade war. But this time we get a chance to get a leg up on China. So which brings us back to our first question. Why ask for diplomatic immunity over a commercial business park? On the surface, that answer might seem obvious. Washington needed an escape hatch from local jurisdiction, red tape, extortion, and rules changing midame. But a country that booted the US basis in 1991 was never going to grant that. And Manila said no. And yet the deal actually sped up. Why? Because the protections Washington wanted were already built into the system. It only works under economic corridors like Peza where they can be one nation under a bigger nation and have their own rules and policies that makes it easier for global manufacturers. They will not be seeking like immunity on the criminal or civilian laws but we will just be focusing on the commercial and business aspect of the partnership. one self-governing zone with its own permits and power grids. And since 1995, they built 436 of these zones. They're essentially countries within a country. Washington's request for diplomatic immunity failed simply because it's redundant. The leverage flipped and the Americans figured it out.
Except one threat doesn't add up. Look at where every American dollar is landing. The Zimbalis study, the Sububi to Batanga's railway, the Tarlac hub, all in Luzon. To be fair, there's a logic to that. The government already owns the land. The quarter generates half our GDP. And infrastructure is already built there. Capital goes where the machine already exists. Resources south, capital north. Every time Filipinos have a name for that pattern, Imperial Manila. As usual, Manila gets first dibs. But now look at where the minerals actually are. We need critical minerals. The Philippines happens to be the fifth richest country for mineral resources. About 90% of our mineral lands have been untapped. Mountain of mineral resources that can supply this global supply chain. Look past the political ribbon cutting in Manila and Clark. If the success of the US-led pack silica alliance depends on extracting raw materials and running energy hungry AI data centers, you simply cannot run that machine solely in a region with limited power and fewer minerals. the money will inevitably look past those on to an island. The whole machine was really built for Mindanao.
So this right here is a 152page geological survey of eastern Mindanao done by the Japanese in 1974. Put the link on the description. You want to know why pack silica's billions will inevitably flow to Mindanao? There are three reasons. 70% of the critical rare earths the US needs to break China's monopoly are in the south, not Luzon. And we know AI and advanced manufacturing drains massive energy. Luzon's grid is maxed out, but Mindanao is sitting on a 900 megawatt surplus. And the US is building connected supply chains. If Luzon is the manufacturing brain, then Mindanao is the blood supply. And you can't run today's tech empire without raw materials and energy. The money has to follow the resources. I didn't just want to tell you the story. I went there. The mines, the ports, the builders, the manufacturers, nobody's covering all in one full documentary. Does the machine ever reach the dirt? Or does Minute stay the story this country keeps not telling? It's coming soon. And if you follow me this far, you're going to want to see it. So, make sure you hit that subscribe and notification button so you don't miss it. The film drops in a few weeks, and when it does, the story doesn't end on the screen. On September 8th, I'm bringing the biggest hitters. I'm talking about manufacturers, investors, policy makers, exporters, all in one room at Manila House in BGC. There's only 50 seats, so request an invite, and it's intimate by design. No need to travel south. The opportunity comes to you. If you're serious about Mindanao, investing, building, or connecting the people who can, go to breakingground.ph and request your invite. Seats are going to go fast, so don't sit on it. And I'll see you there.