It seems to be taking the US forever to realise that China holds the better hand. America expended its stockpiles of rare earth elements by supplying Ukraine, and others, and now that it needs to replace its ordnance, China says, No, we're not going to help you do that.
The US has painted itself into a corner.
China controls the supply of rare earth elements. The US doesn't seem to have a solid grasp of this and it has also been using its ordnance by supplying Ukraine and Israel, meaning that without China resupplying these critical elements, US production will have to be scaled back.
The world is in a strange place at the moment.
I'm starting to think the White House is caught in some kind doom loop, where they're agreeing with one another, but everything they're thinking is complete nonsense.
The following video is a classic example; Donald Trump suggests suspending all imports from China, and then some woman pipes up talking about a pending golden age for farmers, or something.
Firstly, the USA cannot afford to suspend imports from China, and farmers are going bust under current trade policies.
Finally we see some economic development occurring on the mineral rich West Coast of New Zealand.
TiGa is seeking consent to mine ilmenite, or black sand near Greymouth; separating titanium and other heavy minerals, including gold. The output will be sent by rail to Lyttelton or Timaru port on the east coast of the South Island: https://www.tigamm.co.nz/about
Then, already up and running are WMS Group, who are doing much the same thing, but instead are sending their product to the port of Nelson, but in future will be loading bulk carriers off the coast for export to China: https://www.wmsnz.com/critical-minerals/
NZ has the world's largest resource of black sand, located both onshore and offshore. Finally, the quality of this resource is becoming known.
Just to add, there are natural oil and gas shows in the West Coast region, it is a prime strike zone but no-one is exploratory drilling. It also contains uranium, with commercial concentrations in the Buller district, near Kahurangi National Park. As you drive from Westport to Murchison, uranium ores sit by the roadside.
The US is romancing Russia in its supposed rare earth resource deal with Ukraine. That's because, the US, Canada and Australia already have proven reserves waiting to go ahead (and which don't need discovering), while it is Russia that needs mining technology and capital from the US:
https://investornews.com/critical-minerals-rare-earths/ukraine-minerals-deal/
It is economically counterproductive in the extreme to propose wasting American public capital on Ukrainian mineral riches’ discovery and development when American, Canadian, and Australian deposits simply await government approval to go ahead.
The sole area of advantage to the U.S. that the Ukrainian mineral story supports is a political one, and the target isn’t Ukraine. It’s Russia, which has a bad case of the resource curse. Its economy is dependent on oil produced in fields developed by guess-which-country, but has vast known mineral wealth undeveloped due to Russia’s long history of not allowing the free market to operate, and so discouraging private development.
