What if Guinea bans bauxite exports after a coup?
A Guinea coup government halting bauxite exports threatens China's alumina refineries with feedstock starvation — the direct move is alumina and aluminium prices higher (Guinea is ~a quarter of seaborne bauxite, the dominant China supplier); the semis/Alibaba-tariff cascade is mis-mapped. Rhymes with the 2021 Guinea coup that briefly spiked aluminium and alumina, and recurrent Guinea export-permit threats. Forward angle: China's heavy import dependence on Guinea is a single-point vulnerability — a sustained ban forces alumina-refinery cuts and an aluminium squeeze; the trade is alumina/aluminium and Chinese smelter margins, not tech.
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The butterfly cascade
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Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A coup government halts Guinea bauxite exports, threatening China's alumina refineries with feedstock starvation. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Industrial demand ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.