I read a prescient and insightful column in the New York Times by Gracelin Baskaran on March 4. It was entitled, “How Trump Can Turn The Ukraine Mineral Deal Into Real Security.” However, its subtitle could be “Has Trump Done His Homework on Rare Earth Minerals in Ukraine?”
She wrote in the initial paragraph that “for many years, while … China strategically secured minerals from around the world, the United States rarely [my emphasis] used foreign policy to obtain the minerals it needs.” The U.S. economic elite simply became too dependent on gasoline and diesel forsaking the middle and lower class.
This Communist Chinese farsighted policy since 2009 was in stark contrast to the myopic U.S. That is because China used both long-term and efficient government planning, which was highly reminiscent of President Eisenhower’s creation of NASA and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1958.
The U.S. is horribly behind in possessing and refining rare earth minerals. In 2024 the U.S. unwisely obtained 80% of its rare earth minerals from primarily from four countries: China, Japan, Malaysia and Estonia. Now, it needs to make up for lost time, and do it quickly.
Since January 20, Trump, unlike Biden and Obama, has realized that the U.S. is too dependent on overseas rare earth minerals. That is precisely why he wants to acquire Greenland, make Canada the fifty-first state of the Union and possibly acquire desperately needed rare earth minerals in Ukraine. That way we would be able to access “vast reserves of uranium and copper; and … [other] rare earths and titanium in exchange for continued U.S. support” now and for the remainder of the century.
Baskaran wisely pointed out that “incorporating minerals into our foreign policy is crucial for U.S. national security.” That is because we have “less than 2 percent of the world’s reserves of rare earths, graphite, cobalt and nickel, [and] the United States must work closely with resource-rich nations to make sure American companies can get the minerals they need to build … phones, batteries for electric vehicles and semiconductors.”
Baskaran described how once in the late 2000s that “China [had] similar challenges, and … made minerals diplomacy central to its foreign policy. Despite accounting for only 1 percent to 10 percent of global lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper production, China imports enough to process more than 65 percent of some of these metals and 90 percent of rare earths. Communist China has been astoundingly much more successful and focused on the future with its national security compared to the befuddled and misguided Washington.
However, according to Baskaran, what is especially disturbing is that it will take the U.S. “decades” (17.9 years) before we see any impact of any rare earth mineral agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine. That is because the U.S. with its deplorable lack of scientific research “has seemingly minimal knowledge of Ukraine’s underground resources. There is unbelievably no modern mapping of the country’s rare earth deposits; the most recent surveys are believed to have been conducted 30 to 60 years ago by what was then the Soviet Union.”
This is rather incredulous considering that Trump wants to make a “savvy” deal with President Zelensky of Ukraine in 2025. It would have been highly informative if Trump had mentioned his big gamble in Ukrainian rare earth minerals in his national address to Congress on March 4, but that could have been a definite foreign policy embarrassment while possibly creating great public condemnation, and invoking much hypocritical Democratic wrath. The average American’s knowledge about this risky foreign business investment or “deal” potentially costing the taxpayers’ wasted billions of dollars.
This is not good news considering that President Trump would like to make a deal with Zelensky in extracting precious rare earth minerals in order to compensate the U.S. Treasury for the $119.7 billion unlike the untruthful Trump number of $350 billion given to them in military, humanitarian and financial aid since February 24, 2022.
Trump’s deal or risky quid pro quo to pay back Ukraine’s debt is truly a potential boondoggle that may not pay off for approximately eighteen years. That is even if the deal ever pays off since Putin himself stated publicly on July 12, 2021 that he regarded “Russians and Ukrainians [as] one people – a single whole.”
Putin’s or his successor’s aggression toward Ukraine may never stop until Russia annexes the entire country.
According to the UK’s Independent on March 5, there will be great difficulty in accessing Ukraine’s rare earth minerals after a ceasefire. That is because “more than 50 per cent of Ukraine’s critical rare earth mineral resources are in regions illegally annexed by Vladimir Putin and partially occupied by his forces.” That is not good.
However, Baskaran did make some positive recommendations on how to make our acquisition of rare earths minerals more integrated with our foreign policy worldwide. She first pointed out that “between 2009 and 2023, the Chinese government allocated at least $230.9 billion in subsidies to help develop the nascent industry,” especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
That policy began fourteen years ago after China first spent almost a quarter of a billion dollars on infrastructure subsidies. Likewise, the U.S. needs to adopt a similar strategy as soon as possible, but in a much more accelerated manner.
She has pragmatically proposed that the “U.S. Geological Survey” must become more involved in prospecting for more rare earths minerals throughout the world. She has further stated that the U.S. should “also place their attachés in embassies, to work alongside geological surveys and mining ministries in host countries.”
However, this may be easier said than done. Baskaran has also proposed the necessary construction of “roads, bridges and other infrastructure in [these] mineral-rich places.” This is especially true in such war-ravaged areas as Ukraine where Russia has destroyed 50% of the country’s infrastructure, especially in eastern Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine.
Finally, Baskaran has advocated that Washington can minimize its risks “by supporting mining project negotiations, … dispute resolution, and providing financing at below-market rates and political risk insurance.” This would be especially true in the DRC and other areas of the world such as Peru and Zimbabwe, which both contain much rare earth minerals.
I sincerely hope that Trump can make the native Inuits in Greenland an offer that they cannot refuse via a domestic referendum by increasing their standard of living from 100% to 200% compared to Denmark’s current subsidies. That is because the U.S. is truly behind Communist China and not militarily against Denmark or the Western World in the acquisition and processing of rare earth minerals for our future collective national security.
However, there is some good news within the U.S. It is now estimated that “new research found that there could be as much as 11 million tons of rare earth elements in accessible coal ash in the United States, which is nearly 8 times the amount that the U.S. currently has in domestic reserves.” That is certainly excellent news for the future.
I just hope that Trump’s optimistic investment in Ukraine’s rare earth minerals will be a profitable investment, and not one big boondoggle considering our national debt is quickly approaching $37 trillion.
Robert L. Maronic