Maybe, but not in the way this recent article in SupplyChainBrain suggests. The article, which really had the doctor scratching his head, referenced the Atlantic Declaration and how the United States and United Kingdom are resolving to build resilient, diversified, and secure supply chains and, more specifically, bolster the U.K. as a source of five critical minerals: cobalt, graphite, lithium, manganese, and nickel.

While we need a secure supply of these minerals in the Americas to ramp up and sustain EV (Electrical Vehicle) production, as the article also notes, the UK is the world’s 12th largest exporter of cobalt, 16th largest of graphite, 12th largest of manganese, 11th largest of raw nickel, and doesn’t even make the charts on Lithium. It can ramp up all it wants, these numbers aren’t going to change (because every other country is ramping up too), and the bigger countries (likely) have deeper reserves.

Plus, the UK, with very dense cities like London and limited land mass, is in desperate need of EVs itself to keep its smog levels down, so how much can it really afford to export?

The reality is that the UK can help by working with the US to identify non-China sources of these materials, use their collective bargaining might to secure supply at a sustainable cost, and help manage suppliers who are closer to / more used to working with the UK than the US. Similarly, since the UK is a small island and will likely need to import these vehicles (since the local market size doesn’t make an automotive production plant an economical investment for most automotive brands UNLESS a significant part of the UK market would switch to that vehicle), it can also guarantee a market for any suppliers that it secures those materials on behalf of.

Plus, if UK and US companies team up, they can split the effort and share their knowledge and best practices, and the more creativity you have to solve the upcoming challenges, the better — and chances are that the UK, who no longer have the weight and support of the EU backing them up, needs to be very creative these days.

Anyway, while we applaud the joint effort, it’s doubtful that the UK is going to solve even a fraction of the US need raw material wise. But human capital wise, they are even more incentivized than the US to solve these challenges.