This probably could have been handled earlier. Way back in 2019, China dropped not-so-subtle hints that it might retaliate against Trump 1.0-era trade restrictions by blocking minerals vital to modern manufacturing — things you’ve probably never heard of like dysprosium, terbium, indium, and yttrium. If you have an iPhone, you’ve probably heard that it contains tungsten. You’ll never guess where tungsten comes from.
About five years later, in the spring of last year, shortly after Trump resorted to a second helping hand in the trade war with China, China made good on its threat and added those rare earth metals to its export control list.
Since China’s vast mining sector gives it control of 69% of the production of these minerals, and since American manufacturers have begun shutting down operations amid sanctions, Trump had little else to do but make concessions, so he reduced the tariffs.
The White House press release about the deal called it, “a major win that protects America’s economic strength and national security while putting American workers, farmers, and families first.” But this was actually embarrassing for Trump and was generally considered a victory for China.
So, according to Bloomberg, Trump announced a plan on Monday to build a $12 billion stockpile of these minerals to prevent this from happening again.
As the venture is named, “Project Vault,” it sounds like it is currently a storehouse of wealth – $2 billion provided by private capital, plus $10 billion in bank loans.
The project aims to give producers a lifeline in the event of an event that causes a price shock. Companies would commit to purchasing rare earth minerals at some specific price before any such shock. In the meantime, Project Vault must actually find and store all these minerals. The Project Vault holds that inventory, and creators can extract content against their allocation when necessary, but this will come with the obligation to refill the stockpile later.
“We never want to go through what we went through a year ago,” Trump said, according to Bloomberg. He checks.
<a href