This week’s episode of The Big 3 features special guest Rogan Quinn of Rhodium Group, author of Minerals, Metals and Megawatts: How China’s Power Generation Drives Its Industrial Metals Ecosystem. Quinn joins CPA economists Mihir Torsekar and Andrew Rechenberg to explain how China became what he calls an “electrostate” — an industrial power whose dominance in electricity generation, metals processing, and manufacturing mutually reinforce one another.

The conversation breaks down how China’s cheap thermal power, hydroelectric capacity, state-backed credit, and local-government growth incentives helped build the world’s most powerful metals and electrification supply chain. Rather than simply controlling minerals in the ground, China dominates what happens after extraction: refining, smelting, separation, processing, and downstream manufacturing for batteries, EVs, solar panels, electronics, and other electric-current-driven industries.

Quinn also highlights the demand side of China’s system, especially batteries, where falling costs have opened new use cases across vehicles, storage, and heavy-duty trucking. But the system contains major vulnerabilities, including weak cash flows, overcapacity, global demand dependence, and exposure to recession.

The episode closes with lessons from Japan and South Korea, and Quinn’s central takeaway: any country hoping to compete with China’s industrial ecosystem must solve the problem of abundant, cheap power.

Read Rhodium Group's report here: https://rhg.com/research/minerals-metals-and-megawatts-how-chinas-power-generation-drives-its-industrial-metals-ecosystem/


CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Introduction
03:15 - China's Electrostate, Cheap Power, & the Metals Machine Behind EV Dominance
10:16 - Battery Demand, Industrial Scale, & the Engine Driving China's Supply Chains
19:06 - Rare Earth Leverage, Global Risks, & the Fight to Compete with China

This week’s episode of The Big 3 welcomes Beth Baltzan, former senior advisor to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai during the Biden Administration and now deputy director of the Coalition for New Trade, for a wide-ranging discussion on how the global trading system broke — and what should replace it. Baltzan argues that the postwar system originally recognized the danger of unchecked capital mobility and sought to empower workers, but that framework unraveled as floating exchange rates, liberalized capital flows, and free-trade orthodoxy took hold.

The conversation traces how the WTO-era model rewarded capital, weakened labor, and encouraged supply-chain concentration — most visibly through China’s manufacturing dominance and the COVID-era shortages that exposed U.S. vulnerability. Hosts Mihir Torsekar and Andrew Rechenberg highlight how import competition and offshoring suppressed wages, hollowed out industrial communities, and shifted economic gains away from workers.

Baltzan makes the case for a new trade framework built around resilience, labor rights, environmental standards, and corrective action — not reflexive free trade agreements. The episode closes with a discussion of the upcoming USMCA review, rapid-response labor enforcement, digital trade risks, and the need for a bipartisan industrial strategy that rebuilds domestic production while creating a fairer global trading system.


Learn more about the Coalition for New Trade: https://www.coalitionfornewtrade.org/

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - INTRODUCTION
03:24 - BRETTON WOODS, BROKEN PROMISES, & THE RISE OF CAPITAL-FIRST TRADE
19:35 - CHINA SHOCK, SUPPLY FRAGILITY, & THE WORKER COST OF FREE TRADE
44:42 - USMCA REVIEW, LABOR RIGHTS, & THE FIGHT FOR RESILIENT TRADE

This week’s episode of The Big 3 focused on CPA’s new report on the foreign control of America’s antibiotic supply chain and the collapse of the domestic production base that once supported it. CPA economists Mihir Torsekar and Andrew Rechenberg traced the story back to an East Syracuse, New York facility that once produced 70% of America’s penicillin supply, but now produces nothing, symbolizing how the U.S. lost control of a critical industry.

The discussion highlighted how China now supplies roughly 87% of the antibiotic active pharmaceutical ingredients imported by the United States, while India formulates much of those ingredients into the finished drugs Americans consume. The hosts stressed that this is not just a country-level dependence, but a highly concentrated firm-level chokepoint, with a handful of companies controlling much of the trade.

They also underscored that foreign producers are not merely cheaper — in some cases, they are cutting corners on safety, falsifying data, and exposing American patients to greater risk. Finally, the episode explored how policymakers can begin rebuilding antibiotic sovereignty through a mix of tariff-rate quotas, procurement reform, allied sourcing, and support for the remaining Western footholds in production, especially the Sandoz Kundl facility in Austria and the limited final-dose capacity still operating in the United States.