Editor's Note: Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, the #1 personal finance book of all time with over 40 million copies sold, has spent decades teaching everyday Americans how the wealthy actually build income. He called the 2008 housing crash before it happened, warned investors to buy gold and silver well before their historic runs, and has been pounding the table on cash-flowing assets for over 30 years. Today, he'll show you an income play funded entirely by America's oil and gas infrastructure. One that's already paying some investors $25,000 a month and is the closest thing to universal basic income that may ever exist. Click here to 2see the details or read more below.

Elon Musk has been saying the same thing for almost a decade:

"Universal basic income is coming." It's not a question of if — it's when.

And he's right.

AI is already displacing millions of jobs. One report says 40% of all jobs could be automated within the next decade.

When that happens, the government will have no choice but to pay people. The money will come from the companies profiting from AI — through robot taxes, automation fees, or it could even come from a sovereign wealth fund like Alaska has with oil.

That's how Universal Income will get funded. That's how it will become real.

But here's the problem: Washington moves at a snail's pace. This could take 20 years.

So while Musk tweets and Congress holds hearings, what are you supposed to do?

Wait?

I don't think so.

The way I see it, universal income already exists.

It's not funded by robots or AI. It's funded by America's oil and gas infrastructure — and it pays 10% a year, 42 times a year, to everyone who holds units.

I call it the Patriot Income Plan. It's made up of 14 partnerships — and it's already paying out.

In 2020, it paid out $28.8 billion. This year, it's expected to pay out $53 billion.

Think of it as your own personal sovereign wealth fund. Funded by American energy. Paying you like clockwork.

One investor collects $4,800 a month. Another pulls in over $25,000.

Elon is right. UBI is coming. But you don't have to wait.

Enrollment is easy.

Click here to see the details

Sincerely,

Robert Kiyosaki
Editor, The Kiyosaki Letter

Friday, August 28, 2026

A chemical byproduct is holding the whole system hostage.

Copper smelters are paying miners $126.80 per tonne for raw ore. That fee should flow the other way. In a normal market, miners pay smelters to process rock into refined metal. The fee usually runs $60 to $80 per tonne. By mid-2026, the spot rate sat at negative $126.80.

The flow of money has reversed. Smelters compete so hard for ore that they pay miners to take it. This is not a blip. The annual benchmark fee settled at $0 per tonne in January 2026. That had never happened before.

Three forces created this inversion. One is structural. One is accidental. The third is why the system cannot fix itself.

The copper supply chain has inverted at the processing layer. China built far more smelting capacity than the world's mines can feed. Two major mine accidents made the shortage critical. A chemical byproduct, sulfuric acid, keeps money-losing smelters alive when they should be shutting down.

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Treatment and refining charges are what miners pay smelters to process raw concentrate. The industry calls them TC/RCs. Think of it as a processing toll. When smelters are scarce, the toll is high. When smelters are plentiful and ore is tight, the toll drops. It can go negative. That means smelters pay miners.

China drove the inversion. In 2005, Chinese smelters produced about 15% of the world's refined copper. Now they produce more than half. Per the IEA, that growth made up over 90% of all new smelter capacity worldwide.

Too many processors chase too little ore. The toll collapsed.

Observation: China's share of global copper smelting grew from 15% to over 50% in twenty years. That was over 90% of all capacity growth.
Interpretation: The overbuild created structural competition for concentrate. It pushed processing fees to zero, then below it.

The tight market turned critical in late 2025. On September 8, a mudslide hit Grasberg, one of the world's largest copper mines. It buried the operation under 800,000 metric tonnes of wet material. Seven workers died. Freeport-McMoRan said 2026 output could fall 35% below its original forecast. Benchmark Minerals estimated 591,000 tonnes of lost production.

Months later, tunnels collapsed at El Teniente in Chile. The impact registered like a 4.2-magnitude earthquake. Six workers died. Codelco cut El Teniente's forecast by 48,000 tonnes.

Codelco is the world's largest copper miner. Its problems run deeper than one collapse. By July 2026, the company had missed production targets seven straight years. Its chairman told a congressional committee he was dropping the 1.7-million-tonne target for 2030. Output from January through May fell 11.3% versus the year before.

Observation: Grasberg and El Teniente lost roughly 639,000 tonnes of expected output. Codelco abandoned its long-term production target.
Interpretation: The ore shortage moved from chronic to acute. Smelters already fighting over concentrate had far less of it to fight over.

Smelters losing money on copper should shut down. That would ease competition for ore. Fees would drift back toward normal. The system should self-correct.

It has not.

China's smelter group, the CSPT, pledged to cut output by over 10% in 2026. That pledge would have removed about 961,000 tonnes. Instead, Chinese refined copper production grew 7.4% from January through April. March output hit 1.33 million tonnes. That was an all-time record.

The reason is sulfuric acid. Smelting copper produces 3 to 4.5 tonnes of acid for every tonne of metal. That acid feeds fertilizer plants, mining operations, and heavy industry. Acid prices in China started 2026 near 890 yuan per tonne. By April, they hit 1,660.

Jiangxi Copper is China's largest smelter. Its acid sales made up 14.65% of total gross profit in 2025. That is more than copper rod, copper wire, and finished products combined. The byproduct earns more than the main product line.

So the smelters keep running. Not because copper processing pays. Because acid pays. Fastmarkets reported in April 2026 that no Chinese smelters were closing. The public pledge had not led to visible action. The incentive to cut vanishes when the real revenue comes from a different product.

Observation: The CSPT pledged a 10% output cut for 2026. Chinese refined copper output grew 7.4% from January through April. March set a record.
Interpretation: Sulfuric acid revenue makes voluntary cuts economically irrational. The system cannot self-correct through normal pressure on smelter margins.

Most copper analysis focuses on mines or prices. The processing layer sits between them. Right now, that layer holds the structural pressure.

The negative TC/RC is not just a number. It is the system showing you the imbalance. Too many smelters chase too little ore. The corrective force is blocked by a chemical most investors never watch. When a byproduct earns more than the main product, pledges to cut mean nothing. The factory floor earns its keep from something else.

Three signals are worth tracking in the weeks ahead. Spot TC/RCs. Chinese sulfuric acid prices. Actual smelter output versus the pledged cuts. Those three numbers tell you whether the inversion is deepening or starting to ease.

The copper supply chain is inverted at the processing layer. The force keeping it inverted is not copper. It is acid.

Until next time,
The Navigator