This week, we’re diving into news articles published on RareEarthExchanges.com that stood out to each of us. From Trump’s controversial mineral deals to movement happening here in the United States and abroad aimed at reducing our reliance on China.
Listen to the REEx Podcast
(opens in a new tab)Transcript
Dustin Olsen (00:00.964)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You’ve got me, Dustin, and my illustrious co-host, Daniel. And today we’re gonna be talking about some of the headlines that kind of stuck out to us throughout the week since our last show. So Daniel, you are our content expert for the website. What comes to mind?
Daniel OConnor (00:23.34)
Well, it’s been, again, a very interesting last few days. There’s a lot going on in the world of rare earth elements and, again, the broader world of critical minerals. Obviously, we have a new president. There’s a focus on national make America great again type of national economic activity, which is really fascinating to watch unfold.
Of course, Earths is a global business, so lots of interesting things are gonna happen. I’m just gonna go over some key headlines that we have gone through just to kind of update people on what’s happening. One of the ones that sort of was interesting for me was recent executive orders around energy and…
critical energy and minerals and that would be executive orders 14154 and 14159 and these executive orders essentially does an aim to reduce foreign mineral dependence through regulatory rollbacks and other activities. The policy reveals significant infrastructure and processing limitations however that we can talk about in domestic critical mineral production.
And we wonder at rare earth exchanges whether it’s a strategic approach or is it more of political politics and political statements as opposed to true comprehensive industrial policy. So these executive orders essentially involve, know, ambitious, certainly, but we think possibly flawed.
attempt to restructure America’s mineral supply chain. These policies associated with these executive orders are again aimed at reducing foreign dependence and expediting domestic production. And again, here Dustin, we’re talking not only rare earth elements, but also differently critical minerals, right? So this is more broad critical minerals. But it can include rare earth elements.
Daniel OConnor (02:46.604)
And those are different and people keep mixing them up. So they want to reduce foreign dependence and expedite domestic production, introduce regulatory rollbacks. So they want to try to streamline regulatory processes around the mining and other activities, refining, for example, funding initiatives, incentives, so various ways that government can provide support and trade policy shifts.
Now, it’s sort of couched her position in this pro-America, broader energy independence brand that Trump is pushing. But Dustin, there are glaring gaps, contradictions, and frankly, some of the experts we speak with out there around the world as we’re building this network of people that really know this business, both rare earths and critical minerals, geopolitical data.
So on that note, mean, again, these executive orders, again, executive orders 141.54 and 141.59, a lot of potential, but we also see, you know, gaps and contradictions and even some naivete in the whole thing. So any thoughts?
Dustin Olsen (04:10.178)
Yeah, it’s, it is interesting. You know, on one hand, I can see what the Trump administration is trying to do, you know, promote domestic, self-reliance, you know, have our own mining, have our own processing, have our own production. right. That makes sense. I think his approach is possibly.
Misguided we don’t know but we’re not seeing signs of Things going very well. We’re panning out the way that we’d expect So it’s very interesting and you know, it’s been less than a month that he’s been in office, but he’s been very very busy with executive orders and in the direction he’s trying to go I just I think it’s just not being communicated very well, maybe what the vision is with what he’s trying to do and
And I think that inherently breeds confusion among those who know this, like the experts that you referenced, like the experts that we’re talking to, like they know this. think they’re probably confused, but also those that are on the outside trying to make sense of it too. think everyone’s just confused what he’s trying to do.
Daniel OConnor (05:29.57)
Well, if I could just chime in for a minute, I think, you know, and I want to get into what some of the gaps or contradictions are in our critical mineral policy based on these executive orders and other activity, even under Biden. You know, first of all, Trump is, I mean, we’re going through an unprecedented reset in my lifetime and I’m getting up there in age, you know.
We haven’t seen anything like this. So it’s really shaking people up. there’s, you know, the way they’re going about, you know, looking at shutting down agencies, terminating or trying to get early retirements from, you know, tens of thousands of federal employees. mean, it’s a really kind of shock and awe type of process. And they’re doing lots of things. So it’s keeping everybody busy.
There’s going to be a lot of lawsuits. And the goal, think, of Trump and company is to be ahead of the lawsuits. By the time the lawsuits catch up, everything that’s been done has been done. Now, you know, we have a focus on this show, which is, of course, you know, our geological focus of rare earths and critical minerals. I think the challenge, again, you know, how we think here in the West, in America or in Europe, you know, we’re…
know, capitalistic markets, don’t live democracies and there’s a lot of regulation, we’re not, like China’s very different. They have a monopolistic, basically a monopolistic position over, for example, let’s take rare earth, the rare earth processing, refining, separation processing, refining, a lot of fabrication, alloying and manufacturing of magnets.
and other products, control like again, 90 % of that. Now, if you look at these executive orders and you look at where our policy is, you know, I’ll give you some challenges or limitations, okay. One, we lack here in the United States processing infrastructure. We have very few active rare earth processing facilities, limited refining capacity, and mining won’t help.
Daniel OConnor (07:51.948)
We’ve talked about this on the show before. We could have Greenland tomorrow. We could have Canada, let’s say Canada says we’re going to give you all of our rare earths. It won’t matter in the short run because we don’t know how to, we don’t have the capacity to refine it, process it, to refine it. Okay, that’s number one. Number two is the environmental and political backlash.
There’s still a labyrinth of different regulations, environmental regulations and legal capability that local communities will do to stop significant mining like rare earth. There’ll be all kinds of environmental lawsuits. A lot of things can happen on that front. There’s contradictions on clean energy in a way.
So Trump’s killing the EV mandate. We’ve been writing about that a lot of the Paris agreement and lot of the assumptions around green energy were going to be thrown out the window with Trump administration because that’s a part of a strategy. Because remember, Dustin, the move to green energy, if everybody’s on that trajectory, China wins. They’ve controlled all of the inputs, the key foundational building blocks for that.
hence drill baby drill and hydrocarbon. Now, know, killing the electron, the electric vehicle mandate, for example, it could be seen as many by many as maybe contradictory or it might contradict the Trump administration’s push for domestic critical minerals, you know, since batteries and renewables drive demand for lithium, nickel and cobalt, for example.
You drive down the demand, there’s less profit for the companies. The Chinese consolidated state-backed companies win again because it doesn’t matter if the price goes down. Then I want to talk about just a geopolitical reality check.
Dustin Olsen (09:50.137)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel OConnor (09:56.502)
A lot of the countries that we’re looking at as part of our these type partnerships, whether it’s India, Japan, Australia, what have you, are there in no way able to fill China’s role anytime soon. And so, you know, we’re we do need more mining and more supply. There’s an expert we talked to who forecasts that when you factor in things like robotics demand,
for rare earth is going to far outstrip supply, for example, on the rare earth side. So, but you can see we need more mines or access to particular underlying commodity. We need refining, we need processing, we need magnet and other production capability. And there’s some here, but there’s not a lot. So these executive orders to kind of summarize this article.
is may not be enough. We don’t have the industrial policy we need to overcome this challenge. I’ll stop for a minute. Does that make sense to you based on what you’ve been learning at Rare Earth Exchanges?
Dustin Olsen (11:08.802)
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s… Yeah, from the Rare Earth perspective, like, it’s not enough. It’s still interesting to see what the broader, longer play is gonna be here.
I could see that there’s a strong encouragement for bringing a lot of this in-house, you know? But we’re just, not only are we behind, but so are our allies, Australia, Japan, things like that. Like, to your point earlier, like, how are we gonna catch up? And how long, even if there was a hope of catching up, how long is it gonna take? You know, like, I don’t think we’ll see anything.
significant in the rest of this decade.
Daniel OConnor (11:56.046)
Wow, I mean that’s, because we’re writing up, there’s a lot of stuff going on and that’s, you’d predict that, well okay, it’s 2025, so you might be right. I mean we’ll have some capacity, but you know, just remember, if China decided tomorrow to cut us off of all critical, for example, all rare earths, we got a big problem.
Dustin Olsen (12:20.09)
Oh yeah. We, we have a really big problem, but so what’s the, there’s a POSCO, right? One of the articles that was published this week, right? They’re, they’re securing funding for a new facility here in the United States. Right.
Daniel OConnor (12:21.197)
We have a-
Daniel OConnor (12:31.5)
Yeah.
Daniel OConnor (12:38.594)
Well, no, POSCO, let’s talk about that. Okay. So we wrote about POSCO International Star Group. have, did a deal. POSCO is a big Korean steel producer. And at one point by market capitalization, they were the most valuable steel company in the world. I don’t know where they fall today. I have to look it up. But they are…
Along with a company, believe another Korean company called Star Group, they’re building a $220 million permanent magnet manufacturing facility in the United States to support 2.5 million electric vehicles annually.
Dustin Olsen (13:24.238)
Yeah. Yeah. So they’re, trying to build that, but by time it’s built and by time they start delivering something, we’re already two, three years down the road. Right. So we’re like, when are we going to see any, like the decade’s pretty much over at that point, assuming nothing goes wrong.
Daniel OConnor (13:41.282)
Well, yeah, it’s going to take time. I mean, I realize you’re younger than me and you’re part of that generation that wants everything like now.
Dustin Olsen (13:50.971)
Yes, yes, I’m part of the generation that loves and very much appreciates the instant gratification that modern technology has provided.
Daniel OConnor (14:00.494)
That’s right. You need rare earths. I know that. But on this, this is really interesting. Okay. So this is really interesting. POSCO has partnered with Star Group. They’re building this magnet facility, but they’ve also partnered with Aerofura rare earths and Hancock Prospecting. Now Aerofura, they’re building a huge mine in Australia and it’s going to be
supposedly the first integrated like mine to magnet effort. There’s another big mine processor in Australia called Linus, but this group is supposed to be a little bit more dialed in and efficient and streamline their supply chain. Now, interestingly, Dustin, AeroFura, who again is partnering up with POSCO to supply the rare earth for this future situation.
Again, there’s 900 billion in contracts that Pasco already has in North America with North American and European automakers. behind Arafura is a group called Hancock Prospecting and a woman named Gina Reinhardt. Gina Reinhardt is worth, I think, $30 billion. And she basically…
Dustin Olsen (15:08.036)
Mm-hmm.
Dustin Olsen (15:24.282)
37 as of 2023, evaluated her at 37 billion.
Daniel OConnor (15:29.87)
You know, Dustin, the rich keep getting richer and the poor get poorer. I hate to break it. Yeah. So with Gina, she, I think, owns, she owns a significant percentage of Arafura and apparently just about every other rare earth company. Gina has significant stock. So she’s a very powerful woman. She’s the wealthiest person in all of Australia.
Dustin Olsen (15:34.042)
It feels that way.
Daniel OConnor (15:58.702)
And but what this group is doing is they’re creating what we call an ex China outside of China rare earth supply chain for electric vehicles. That’s just one example. Okay, and We wrote about that this week There’s a couple other interesting things That we wrote about involving Rare earths and critical minerals. I’ll just look at a couple other ones just for the week
The.
We saw that NIDEC and Noviion Magnetics struck a rare earth magnet deal, step to what they’re claiming is a step toward US supply chain resilience, meaning US will become independent per your and every other consumer’s desire in terms of ensuring we have the products that we’re looking to consume in the future. Now, this was a couple of days ago we wrote about this, but
So, Nodek Motor Corporation is from Japan and Novihan Magnetics is from Texas and they secure a five-year agreement for over a thousand tons of centered NDFEB rare earth magnets. So, the partnership is trying to, again, reduce U.S. dependence on China rare earth supply chain and support domestic high-performance magnets.
production and remember the DOD has this rule Department of Defense United States has a rule that by January 2027 all military or defense contractors need to procure their magnets, rare earth magnets from non-Chinese sources. So there’s a bunch of deals like this going on.
Daniel OConnor (17:59.446)
out in the market. It’s moving very fast and we know experts who have told us, and these are people that have been in this business 20 years, Dustin, and they’re saying they can’t even keep up. So, and we’re new to this. you know, we’re bringing more, we’re trying to bring a more popular understanding to this space so that we can inform and enlighten other people, get their curiosity going so they can start asking questions,
And hopefully some powerful policy people might listen in on us as well, our Rare Earth Exchange’s news site. Any questions on the night agnovea and magnetics?
Dustin Olsen (18:40.474)
no, I don’t think so. It’s, it’s encouraging, right? I mean, people are trying, businesses are making really big, deals, negotiation deals to, to counter, you know, our reliance on, on China. so, you know, they might surprise me, you know, come 2030, we might actually see some, movement, you know, but, I don’t know.
Daniel OConnor (19:10.616)
Well, I want to talk about one more thing quickly, and that is Ukraine. you know, Ukraine’s head Zelensky has been trying to use rare earth elements as a bargaining chip to secure U.S. protection from Russia, because the landscape has changed with Trump in, make no mistake. That Russian-U.S. conflict, the conflict between Ukraine and
Russia is going to be stopped somehow, some way through US mitigation. now, Zelensky has said, I’ve got lots of rare earths. You can have it. $500 billion, I think we heard Donald Trump say that. people aren’t telling Trump the truth. I wish Trump would watch this show, Dustin, because then he would get the truth.
Dustin Olsen (20:04.117)
Hahaha
Daniel OConnor (20:07.758)
about what’s going on. And that is Ukraine doesn’t have a lot of rare earths. I mean, they have some. Of course, rare earths are everywhere. They’re not that rare. They’re just scattered around. to They’re hard to mine in a concentrated form. But Ukraine doesn’t have a large amount of rare earths. They have a significant amount of certain critical minerals. But even then, at least 50 % based on reports we’ve been
reading and reporting on are based in the eastern Donbass and other areas of Ukraine that are controlled by Russia. So think Zelensky is tricking Trump, President Trump. And we need to get, we need to, I’m going to DC next week, we need to get to President Trump and we need to tell him that we need to do an inventory of Ukraine before we sign any deal.
Dustin Olsen (20:51.331)
Thanks
Dustin Olsen (21:03.354)
Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, and ask how much is it going to cost anyway? Like, they might have it on the ground, how do get it out? Who’s going to pay for that?
Daniel OConnor (21:05.101)
Okay?
Daniel OConnor (21:10.958)
Well, that’s really important point because there isn’t the separation. There isn’t the processing. There isn’t the refining. You’re going to have to ship it. Guess we’re going to end up shipping it right now. Yeah.
Dustin Olsen (21:25.69)
China. And China’s gonna think, great, we didn’t have to pay for Ukraine. Thank you.
Daniel OConnor (21:32.28)
That’s right. Thanks. We’ll take it. So there’s a lot of, I don’t know if it’s misinformation. I just think there’s a lot of, I mean, again, we’re new to this and we know, we see so much information that is not right, but we’re learning. We make mistakes here and there. We’ve been called out on that. You know, there’s smart asses out there, excuse my French, who love to tell you how smart they are. But,
I can tell you, know, President Trump needs a minerals czar.
We need to consolidate, we need a mineral czar, we need to streamline these agencies that somehow oversee some aspects of mining, and we need a industrial policy. That doesn’t mean we have to all do it here. We can work with partners, some of it outsource here, outsource here, but we need to go in that direction. Either that or I’ll say.
Dustin Olsen (22:12.186)
Mm-hmm.
Daniel OConnor (22:40.246)
President Trump, and he’s the man to do this if anybody is, he can fly to Beijing and do an incredible deal and secure us 20 years of cheap rare earths in exchange for China having certain access to some of our markets. Now, that’s probably not going to happen, but if any president could do it, it would be him.
Dustin Olsen (22:44.314)
you
Dustin Olsen (23:01.732)
Yeah, I would agree. think Trump has the tenacity to make deals, you know, even if it’s just for his own pride and gloating of just saying, I did that. You didn’t think it was possible. I did that.
Daniel OConnor (23:17.614)
What? mean, look!
Hey, he walked into North Korea. You remember? He’s the only president, I think, that’s ever walked into North Korea. I think. I may be wrong.
Dustin Olsen (23:24.056)
Right? Yeah.
Dustin Olsen (23:32.667)
Yeah, he’s, he’s, uh, he’s not shy about what, what his intentions are or what he wants to do. So, um, yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, I have to keep reminding myself, you know, like Trump’s been in office three weeks. Right. And he’s done a lot, but we still have, you know, three years and 11 months to go.
Daniel OConnor (23:37.645)
Hahaha!
Dustin Olsen (24:02.938)
A lot could change, know, he could, you know, in three years fly to Beijing and make a deal. You know, he could change his tune. So, and I think that’s the reminder, right? Nothing’s set in stone, right? I think there’s, and no pun intended, right?
Daniel OConnor (24:09.955)
Yeah.
Daniel OConnor (24:13.336)
Yeah, I mean, I think.
Daniel OConnor (24:19.107)
Thank
And you know, Dustin, trade, in my opinion, you know, you may, I don’t know if you agree or not, trade, you know, economic engagement and prosperity always beats, you know, national turf wars and war ultimately. So, you know, I’d rather have trade and prosperity and peace to any day.
Dustin Olsen (24:50.424)
Mm-hmm, 100%. So, cool, any final thoughts on what stood out or maybe what you hope for with what you’ve seen?
Daniel OConnor (25:05.262)
So I think, based on our reporting and what we’re observing, the chatter around this topic is growing quickly. there’s, again, a lot of misinformation, probably some disinformation. I mean, again, we’re just learning as well. So we’re sharing what we’re learning as we go. I would say, you know,
I would like to see more clarity as to what the strategy is for how the U.S. can become more resilient. I see a flurry of executive orders and deals happening, but I’d like to see in the Trump administration, I’ll be watching for this, we’ll be watching for this, some kind of hint at industrial policy.
And it just may not be in the mindset of the folks running the country now, but I think we do have to think in industrial policy, which means some planning. It’s different than just a free market race, right? It’s different. And I think to take on China and to have more resilience, think…
we’ll have to start looking for indications and maybe, know, again, Trump doesn’t like to broadcast everything he’s doing. So maybe he’s, you know, not talking about it and behind the scenes they’re doing things we don’t know about. And I could see that too. So let’s keep an eye on it.
Dustin Olsen (26:44.068)
For sure. And I would share in the same hope as well that in the coming week, hopefully it’s that quick, that we at least have clarity on what the intentions are, for better or worse. But I think just adding that clarity will help quite a bit for all players in this segment that rely on
rare earths or critical minerals at some point, upstream, midstream, downstream. Because I think there’s just a lot of retaliation right now. There’s a lot of assumptions and things like that, which really isn’t going to help anyone. I think we’ll all lose if that clarity doesn’t come.
Daniel OConnor (27:31.586)
Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, my friend.
Dustin Olsen (27:34.692)
So great. Well, with that, think we should wrap up the show, save some more for next week. So if you haven’t already come on over to rareearthexchanges.com and check out the latest news. Sign up for a newsletter. got daily updates of just things are being published and yeah, check out our podcast, come to LinkedIn, join the community and the conversation over there and we’ll catch you guys next week.
Dustin Olsen (28:03.844)
Thanks guys.
Daniel OConnor (28:04.088)
Thanks. Thank you.