‘Old Economy’ Comes Back As Conflict and AI Spark a Global Resource Crunch

Global markets are shifting from digital dominance to physical resource scarcity across energy, industrial metals, and food. Artificial intelligence infrastructure needs have met geopolitical challenges in the middle, revealing gaps within the global market.

The current crunch differs from the China-led demand supercycle of the 2000s, according to a new report from global investment manager Ninety One.

“This is the revenge of the old economy,” said Paul Gooden, head of natural resources at Ninety One. “Demand is solid, but the real story is supply.”

Gooden argues that access to physical resources could soon matter as much as access to capital. Global oil inventories are down about 1 billion barrels, proposed U.S. data centers need 200 gigawatts of power, and fertilizer shortages threaten the 2027 planting cycle.

Barrels, Megawatts and Pipeline Politics

The crude market faces crises in upstream supply, refining and shipping, and each one makes the others worse. The report said Middle Eastern and Russian supply is missing between 7 million and 7.5 million barrels a day, while about 8 million barrels a day of global refining capacity is offline.

“Even if the conflict ended tomorrow, rebuilding a billion barrels of inventories would create additional demand for years,” Gooden noted.

Energy security is also shaping North American diplomacy. The U.S. and Canada have imposed billions of dollars in tariffs on each other, and the U.S. midterm elections are on Tuesday.

Speaking in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday, President Donald Trump said he and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney have the “concept” of a new trade deal. Trump said it would revive the canceled 830,000-barrel-per-day Keystone XL pipeline.

“They’re going to build the Keystone Pipeline,” he said. “We’re going to give them the route.”

Meanwhile, reshoring and AI are ending two decades of flat U.S. electricity growth. Proposed U.S. data centers need about 200GW, roughly 200 times San Francisco’s power use. Thus, hyperscalers have to turn to other solutions, like natural gas.

“Without the power to run them, even the most advanced data centers are just expensive buildings,” Gooden said.

Metals Divergence, Crop Shocks and How to Play the Squeeze

Record metals prices hide sharp regional differences. Copper inventories are piling up in the U.S. amid tariff uncertainty, even as Chilean output falls to a six-year low.

Portfolio manager George Cheveley, who has followed copper since 1998, called it “one of the strangest I’ve seen.” He warned that “at these prices, copper looks increasingly risky” despite strong long-term fundamentals.

Central banks bought a net 289 tons of gold in the second quarter of 2026, up 62% year over year, according to the World Gold Council, but miner valuations are yet to reflect the higher profits.

Agriculture faces Middle Eastern nitrogen disruptions and potash export bottlenecks. In 2025, Canada produced about 15 million tons of potash, Russia 10 million tons and Belarus 6 million tons.

Supply could get tight when Northern Hemisphere farmers return to buy inputs for 2027. Portfolio manager Dawid Heyl pointed to plateauing grain inventories, a prolonged El Niño, higher diesel costs and a possible U.S. shift to 15% ethanol blending.

Together, he said, they could create “a potential multi-year bull market, particularly across nitrogen fertilizer, biofuels and seeds.”

“The next investment cycle may be defined as much by what the world struggles to produce as by what it wants to consume,” Gooden said.

Investors positioning for the squeeze are using broad funds such as the FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index Fund (NYSE:GUNR) and the SPDR S&P Global Natural Resources ETF (NYSE:GNR). Both hold upstream energy, metals, and farm-input companies. The more targeted VanEck Natural Resources ETF (NYSE:HAP) is another option.

Image via Shutterstock