Professor Chahir Zaki conducted last week's AIRESS Research seminar titled “Mineral Magnetism: How Critical Minerals Shape Trade Deals?”.

The seminar explored the rapidly growing demand for critical minerals and its influence on the proliferation of international trade agreements and strategic partnerships, such as the Minerals Security Partnership. Drawing on advanced trade data and a gravity model approach, the presentation bridged existing research on trade agreement formation with emerging work on the geopolitical and economic role of critical minerals.