Episode Details

Stijn Schmitz welcomes back Simon Hunt to the show. Simon is a consultant on the global economy, China, and the copper industry. The discussion opens with the ongoing disruption in the Strait of Hormuz and its profound implications for global energy supplies. Hunt explains that Saudi Arabia is attempting to broker a new regional architecture involving China, Russia, Pakistan, and Turkey, partly in response to Iran’s demonstrated military capabilities. He assesses only a fifty percent chance of success, warning that even if a ceasefire is reached, reopening the strait to normal traffic could take months, and oil stockpiles in Asia, Europe, and America may be exhausted by mid-July.

This supply crunch, he argues, makes a global recession nearly certain by year-end, deepening significantly in the following year. The conversation shifts to China’s strategic positioning. Hunt notes that China anticipated American geopolitical moves and has diversified its energy sources through pipelines from Russia and Kazakhstan, alongside massive domestic coal and renewable capacity. This allows China to withstand the Hormuz closure indefinitely, unlike Western nations. The discussion then turns to the evolving global monetary order, where Hunt describes a BRICS-led effort to create a multipolar system anchored in physical gold.

He details China’s construction of Shanghai Gold Exchange vaults in Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong, enabling trade settlement in non-G7 currencies convertible to gold. While he sees gold prices reaching double-digit thousands in five years, he cautions that America is unlikely to revalue its gold reserves and warns of potential government confiscation during crises. On commodities, Hunt challenges the prevailing supercycle narrative, calling it premature. He predicts that a deep recession will cause physical demand to collapse, outweighing current supply constraints. He specifically highlights copper, noting that NVIDIA’s shift to photonics could eliminate copper from data centers by 2028, undermining a key demand thesis. Strategic stockpiling of critical minerals by governments will eventually follow, but processing capacity remains a bottleneck controlled by China.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:00 – Middle East Conflict Origins
00:03:46 – New Gulf Security Architecture
00:06:05 – Oil Supply Disruption Impacts
00:08:06 – Straits of Hormuz Reopening
00:08:37 – China Trump Trade Dynamics
00:12:25 – Oil Prices Futures Disparity
00:14:14 – Fertilizer and Food Crisis
00:16:10 – BRICS Monetary System Shift
00:22:51 – Bond Yields and Instability
00:25:02 – Recession Outlook and Assets
00:30:40 – Commodity Supercycle Analysis
00:33:00 – Concluding Thoughts

Guest Links:
E-Mail: mailto:simon@shss.com
Website: https://simon-hunt.com/
Report: https://www.theinstitutionalstrategist.com/products-and-services/frontline-china/

Simon Hunt began his career in 1956 in Central Africa as a PA to the Chairman of Rhodesian Selection Trust, one of the two large copper companies in what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia.

In 1961, he came back to London and joined Anglo American Corporation of South Africa as a PA to one of the Board Directors, followed by being part of a small sales and marketing team for copper. From there, he helped start up a new copper development organization, CIDEC, financed by copper producers, which he then joined, focusing on conducting end-use studies of copper in Europe.

He then went into the City to gain financial experience and founded Brook Hunt in 1975. He was instrumenta