Don Surber
What's in it for us?
My guess is the USA gets access to Russian rare earth minerals
After meeting with Putin on Friday in Alaska, Trump played a round of golf and invited Zelensky, Ursula von der Leye (EU’s leader), Macron and Merz (Germany) to the White House to agree to his terms and end the war. We’ll see. It’s their war, not his. He just wants to give peace a chance.
The Democrats spin is oh, he just wants a Nobel Peace Prize. They would rather let another million people die than support him.
While Trump wants peace, he also wants a piece—a piece of rare earth elements. Russia has them. Trump wants some.
Not content with Russia’s vast REE riches, Putin took Donbas which is supposed to be rich with the minerals.
Donbas also goes well with Crimea, which Putin, um, annexed during Obama’s second term—you know the one where he assured the Russians that he would be more flexible.
After mocking Romney for saying Russia was a threat. Obama said the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back. That 1980s policy worked for the betterment of the world.
The election of Trump saw Obama do a U turn as he demonized Russia. That was part of the coverup of Obama’s use of the FBI to spy on Trump.
Putin stayed on the porch in Trump’s first presidency, then pounced on Ukraine again when when the Senile Pedo took over the Oval Office. I read this weekend that Biden’s daughter is getting a divorce. I didn’t know she was married. Imagine the bridal shower her daddy gave her.
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Trump is trying to end this stale, stinking war in Ukraine. That means he had to meet with Zelensky, who plotted with Pelosi to impeach Trump the first time.
The Donald also had to deal with Putin. John McCain was right. When I look in Vlad Putin’s eyes, I too see KGB. We are at the point where the KGB treats our president with more respect than the CIA does. It’s Reagan all over again.
Never Trumper John Podhoretz picked up on the DNC talking point that Obama never met with Putin on U.S. soil. But Obama gave up Crimea anyway, didn’t he?
Podhoretz tweeted in response to a tweet from Sean Davis, “I guess William F. Buckley Jr, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater, and almost everyone else in the 20th century on the Right who opposed direct talks between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were neocon warpigs? You psychopathic dimwit.”
Reagan talked directly with Gorbachev in Iceland. The USSR collapsed 4 years later.
A summit near the Arctic circle was not the only parallel. Mark Simone of the New York Post tweeted two pictures and said, “It was the moment in 1959 that made young Richard Nixon a hero. Maybe Donald Trump deliberately recreated the moment.”
Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin and then trolled him with a B-2 flyover.
The summit in Alaska was a success regardless of what happens today. The end of the Ukraine War is pretty simple. Russia keeps the land it stole, Zelensky saves a little face and Democrats (who gave away Afghanistan) will call Trump names and the right will defend him. This already has begun.
Except for John Bolton, no one wants this war to continue—not even Lindsey Graham, who said, “Putin didn’t come to Alaska to see how it was doing after the U.S. bought it. Putin came to Alaska because President Trump put a 50% tariff on India for purchasing Russian oil and gas.”
Zelensky ran out of ammo. Putin ran out of men. For all the Russian prowess at chess, the Russian war plan is almost always a bloodbath. Their generals win by feeding more bodies into the battle than the enemy can shoot. Red China used that strategy in the Korean War.
In the wee hours on Saturday, Trump tweeted on Truth Social:
A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelenskyy will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
I don’t see how Little Z and NATO can say no because without the USA’s involvement, Ukraine collapses. Whether they sign the paper, old man, depends on whether they want to eat lunch at the White House.
My guess is the real negotiation between Putin and Trump was on Russia’s economy. The EU won’t let Putin dominate the European energy market again but Trump likely will lift U.S. sanctions and give him the opportunity to more than offset the loss of the EU energy market by doing business with the good old USA.
We all should know by now that what Trump wants out of Russia are REE minerals. We don’t know whether Putin wants to cut that deal just yet.
REE is said to be the key to commerce in the 21st century. Red China dominates the market with 44 million metric tons in reserve and likely control of Vietnam’s 22 million metric ton reserve.
That’s half of the world’s current estimate of 130 million metric tons in reserve. A look at the Top 10 countries with proven reserves shows the USA in seventh place.
The BRICS countries are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The first four dominate the list, which is why you can see Trump’s willingness to buy Greenland (eighth place) and annex Canada (tenth place). Trump should see if Tanzania (ninth place) is in play.
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Red China and Trump are at a stalemate in their tariff negotiations. Xi needs our market. Trump needs Xi’s rare earth elements. The Economist believes Xi’s strategy of withholding REE will backfire:
When China choked off the export of rare-earth elements in April, producers and politicians around the world were quick to sound the alarm. The country provides 90% of the world’s supply of refined rare earths, used to make the strong magnets inside almost anything with an electric motor, from vacuum cleaners to cars. Ford halted a factory line in Chicago; carmakers in India and Japan curtailed production. The car industry is in “panic mode”, said one boss. Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, thundered against China’s “dominance” and “blackmail”.
At first glance the use of rare earths as a weapon is working—and Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader, is getting what he wants. After the flow of rare earths resumed, America’s president lifted controls on the sale of some Nvidia chips, and delayed a hefty increase in import duties; on August 11th America and China further extended their trade truce. In July, Mrs. von der Leyen went cap-in-hand to Beijing, seeking looser restrictions. But in the long term, China’s rare-earths weapon will backfire.
The new controls are a sign of just how sophisticated China’s economic arsenal has become. After a political spat in 2010 it briefly blocked the exports of rare earths to Japan; in a fit of pique in 2020, it increased duties on Australian Shiraz and grass-fed beef. Now, however, Mr Xi has put in place a system of export controls that seek to exploit China’s heft in global supply chains. A licensing scheme covering more than 700 goods, including manufacturing equipment and critical minerals, began operating in December. Officials keep careful track of the ultimate consumer of the products, and can revoke licenses. Even though rare-earths exports have resumed in recent weeks, for instance, sales to Western arms makers are still choked off.
The aim is clear. Mr Xi wants to indigenize supply chains, so that China is not at the mercy of its enemies for critical inputs—an effort that was turbocharged after America banned the export of advanced chips to China. He also hopes to use China’s control of supply chains as a source of power over others. As long ago as April 2020 he told officials that dependency on China could be a “deterrent” against foreigners who would “artificially cut off supply.”
I think Chairman Xi could have the upper hand, but never bet against The Donald.
David Barboza, an NYT alumnus, wrote, “Rare earth metals are critical to many green energy technologies, including the development of electric vehicles. And for decades, [Red] China has played a dominant role in mining, processing and producing them at scale. Beijing has also begun restricting access to them, for trade and diplomatic reasons. The world is now taking note, and looking for alternatives.”
Reserves are nice to have but they are meaningless if you don’t mine them.
Mining REE requires money and heavy equipment. Trump and the USA have access to both. Last month, the Republican X account Rapid Response 47 tweeted, “The U.S. is opening its first Rare Earth mine in more than 70 years—providing a critical supply of six of the seventeen Rare Earth elements that are used in everything from war planes to semiconductors to our smartphones.”
I have no direct knowledge of what Putin and Trump discussed but the Ukraine deal seems a lock to me. Sure, Trump wants the war to end. It’s been a meatgrinder for most of its three years. Cut off funds to Zelensky and lift sanctions on Putin and the war should end, but we are dealing with two dumb bunnies with larger egos than they have brains.
What’s in it for America? I believe it is REE. Trump’s Golden Age will require scads of Scandium, Yttrium, Lanthanum, Cerium, Praseodymium, Neodymium, Promethium, Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terium, Dysprosium, Holmium, Erbium, Thulium, Ytterbium and Lutetium.
I hope Putin and Trump reached an agreement on that. Even the KGB knows when to cut a deal. |
