The price should be disconnected from the actual, physical use. If we have a surplus of a substance now but there is reason to believe that we'll need a lot mor

The price should be disconnected from the actual, physical use. If we have a surplus of a substance now but there is reason to believe that we'll need a lot more of it later then the sensible thing to do is to hoard most of it until it is needed and to start producing more of it. Speculators help do that by driving up the price which is a signal to both producers and consumers. The market thought that China was going to need a lot of lithium for EVs, so the price went up which incentivized higher production and lower use. That's a good thing because it made it more likely that China would meet their demand. Now the market has better information that China is going to need less lithium than previously thought so the price drops which makes it viable for previously marginal users.