Brazil’s new President, Jair Bolsonaro, has set much store by niobium, used to make steel stronger and lighter. Brazil accounts for more than 80% of the world’s supply of niobium and so smitten is Bolsonaro with niobium that he produced a 20-minute YouTube video touting its virtues. “The world talks a lot about Silicon Valley, right?” Bolsonaro says in the video. “I dream, who knows, that one day, we’ll also have a Niobium Valley.” This picture shows a niobium mining facility at Catalao, in Brazil’s Goias state, which is owned by China Molybdenum. China’s purchase two years ago of the small Brazilian niobium mine had Bolsonaro agitating during his election campaign to block further foreign acquisitions of Brazilian assets deemed to be strategic.