One World With Zain Asher and Bianna Golodryga
Zain Asher: President Trump is personally attending a meeting at the white house with Japanese officials to negotiate tariffs. His administration says that it is working on tailored tariff deals with several dozen countries. Last week, Trump announced a 90 day pause on his so-called reciprocal tariffs while applying a universal 10% rate. In the meantime.
Zain Asher: The U.S. President’s trade war could be set for another escalation, with Trump ordering a probe into the security impact of imports of critical minerals. That includes rare Earth minerals, which play a key role in tech devices, from smartphones to electric cars and military weapon systems, and the supply of rare Earths is dominated by China.
Bianna Golodryga: Beijing has already placed export controls on certain rare Earths, demonstrating its capacity to inflict pain on the U.S., which imports 70% of its Rare Earths from China. Now, China’s reserves of rare Earths are more than twice the size of those held by any other country, and it accounts for more than 60% of the global rare Earth mining.
Zain Asher: Let’s take a deeper dive into how China’s new export restrictions could impact the U.S. Joining us live now is the CEO of chemical supplier American elements, Michael Silver, and executive director of U.S. Critical materials, Harvey Kaye. Michael, let me start with you. Just give us your reaction in terms of how China is weaponizing these rare Earth minerals and what the impact could be on your business and also on American consumers as well.
Michael Silva: Well, first, as to American elements some smarter than I in my company did a real smart thing. And when they started restricting materials, they began first with gallium and germanium. We went forward on our raw material requirements, and we’re we’re good. What the Chinese have actually done at this point is something they’ve done twice before. 25 years ago and 15 years ago, where they began a restriction process, which begins with a licensing requirement, which is what we’re under right now. So we have 45 days to re license our future shipments, which is what we’re doing currently. We don’t anticipate certainly any problems in 2025 for materials. 2026 we assume we’ll get our licenses because we have a very good relationship there in in China. And for the moment, we don’t we don’t see really any issues unless this goes a lot further. And in that case, the Chinese could easily do what they’ve done in the past, which is much different from what everybody’s talking about in the news about shutting down or cutting off the economies. One thing they can always do is what they did in 25 years ago was they dropped the prices actually to about a fifth, which closed out all of the other operators. There were two at the time, rhone-poulenc and molycorp, and those two companies had to close their doors because the prices were too low. They couldn’t operate. Second thing they can do, which is what they did 15 years ago, which is, reduce the prices inside of China to a very, very low number and then charge the high prices, higher prices, or at least the current prices, or maybe a little more outside of China, thus encouraging companies to build their plants inside of China rather than, for example, the United States, in order to access those cheap rare Earths. We had General Electric as a customer back then, lost them to China because they moved their glass plants to China. So those those two activities is what might happen in the future.
Bianna Golodryga: Harvey, let me turn to you because I know your company’s goal is to reduce U.S. Dependance on foreign sources for rare Earths materials. And I know you’ve developed mining deposits in two U.S. States, specifically Montana and Idaho. Give us a realistic sense, though, of how close the united States is to being self reliant on rare Earth materials.
Harvey Kaye: I just point out the difference between what happened 15 years ago and what happens today. 15 years ago, it was used as an economic weapon. As Michael said, to reduce the prices to dry up domestic production and so on. They played the long game. Today it’s a geopolitical weapon and it was just evoked in terms of tariffs from our perspective, we believe that critical mineral sovereignty, by virtue of having supply and indeed processing here in the United States, is critical for defense and Independence of action against China in the world. To that end, we have 336 claims in a place called sheep creek, Montana. It has been judged by independent analyzes by both Idaho national labs and activation labs as the highest grade rare Earths ever found in America. 9 to 18%. And we have a very substantial deposit of gallium, which is probably in the highest grade, 180 to 380 parts per million, versus 60 parts per million in Greenland and Ukraine. And we are working with Idaho national lab to develop environmentally benign processing. So while we agree with what Mike said, we also believe that Independence needs to be coming from our country in terms of critical minerals.
Bianna Golodryga: But how close are we getting? Are we to that point? Harvey.
Harvey Kaye: Well, that’s a very interesting question because what is accelerated, that is a number of actions based upon decisions made by the current administration. The first is the evolution of the defense protection act. Secondly is an executive order requiring fast tracking for national security purposes. And third is an executive order that has been implemented over the last three weeks or four weeks. What that means is what would normally take an awfully long number of years to get permitted is now being fast tracked, utilizing things such as categorical exemption such as small mining exemptions and such as activity by the government in order to fast track permitting. We believe that it’s about, for us, at least a two year, maybe a three year process in order to start extraction. But we have an objective of being able to produce gallium and some rare Earths that we would like to present either on the steps of the white house or perhaps the Pentagon. By the first quarter of 2026. Made in America, processed in America, and provided for America.
Zain Asher: And Michael, just quickly just walk us through. I mean, a lot of our audience might not necessarily understand how critical these rare Earth minerals are to the U.S. Economy. When you think about gallium, titanium, niobium, tungsten. Just explain to our audience, just in terms of their use in defense, in national security, in electric vehicles, for example, in electronics, pharmaceuticals, everything. How crucial are these rare Earths to our everyday lives?
Michael Silva: They’re absolutely essential. I mean, all the technology has been built on that. You know, you notice there’s a valley very north of me here in California that we’re all the computers were invented. What’s the name of that valley? It’s silicon valley material science is what drives all of all of the technologies we have. And those are you name some of the key materials, but the one you ones you mentioned are not the critical minerals that are really being discussed. Those are commodities that operate under global commodity prices. There’s another category that we at American elements call asymmetric commodities. Those are ones like the rare Earth metals that are controlled by a single nation. They just want out. When plate tectonics push materials around. And China has a dominant position in rare Earths. And as a result, every company I, if I may, including us critical minerals and all the others that are being funded today, operate at the whim of China. If China wants to drop prices, as they did in 2000, down to, say, $8 a kilogram for neodymium oxide, which is currently in the 40 to $60 range and was before that they can use that to squeeze everybody out if they want you to survive and force companies to go into China. They’ll they’ll do a price differential, which is what Mr. Kay referenced about 15 years ago, and charge less in China than in the United States. To me, the only way to deal with all this is for us to get back into multilateral discussions Simila the wto. There’s no way to have mines outside of China succeed if China doesn’t want them to. They control the marketplace. It’s an asymmetric commodity, and they have a sovereign monopoly on these materials. It’s similar to niobium and Brazil. Brazil’s a lovely country, so they don’t mess with us. But all the niobium pretty much in the world is in Brazil. They would have a similar position with that material. So rare Earths are an asymmetric commodity that are different from the others.
Bianna Golodryga: Yeah, and it’s interesting because our viewers have become a bit more familiar with the term rare Earth minerals. Given the conversation now in the war in Ukraine and even Greenland and U.S. Interest in Greenland. But of course, as you know, China really is the behemoth here in terms of who has oversight and control of the land where most of these. Minerals are found. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Fascinating.
Michael Silva: The reserve.
Bianna Golodryga: Quickly, quickly, Harvey. Yes.
Harvey Kaye: Okay. The quickly is. There’s 3800 military uses for gallium alone. I believe that our country now realizes that they have to find a way for critical mineral sovereignty. And I’m not disagreeing with Mike. I’m just saying that we need it here as well as there.
