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Cnn
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The American trade war with China has a major bonding point: minerals of rare earths.
Last month, President Donald Trump said the United States needed Greenland “very badly”, ” renew your threat To annex Danish territory. Greenland is an island rich in resources with an abundant offer of critical minerals, a category which also includes elements of rare earths, under its glacial cap. Trump also signed a “Rare Land DealWith Ukraine.
The fight on the rare earths precedes the current administration. China for years has built an almost total control of materials as part of its wider industrial policy.
Here’s what you need to know about rare earths.
What are rare earths, and are they really “rare”?
The rare earths are 17 metallic elements in the periodic table composed of scandium, yttrium and lanthanides.
The names of the “rare earths” is somewhat improper, because the materials are in the whole crust of the earth. They are more abundant than gold, but they are difficult and expensive to extract and treat, and also harmful to the environment.
The rare earths are omnipresent in the technologies on which we count every day, from smartphones to wind turbines via LED lights and flat -screen televisions. They are also crucial for batteries in electric vehicles as well as MRI scanners and cancer treatments.
Rare earths are also essential for the American army. They are used in fighter planes F-35, submarines, lasers, satellites, tomahawk missiles and more, according to research in 2025 note of CSIS.
The International Energy Agency said that 61% of the production of mined rare land comes from China and that the country controls 92% from the overall exit to the treatment stage.
There are two types of rare earths, classified by their atomic weights: heavy and light. The rare earths are rare and the United States does not have the capacities of the task difficult to separate rare earths after extraction.
“Until the beginning of the year, whatever the heavy land we have done in California, we have always sent to China for separation,” Director of the Critical mineral security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told CNN.
However, the Trump administration of excessive prices on the sky on China in April has derailed this process. “China has shown a desire for armaments” to America’s dependence on China for the separation of rare earths, she said.
The United States has a mine of rare operational land in California, according to Baskaran.
Trump on Friday said on Truth Social that China has violated a commercial truce Set up last month. Beijing kept its export controls on seven minerals of rare land and associated products, which were considered to be a response to Trump’s “reciprocal prices” on Chinese products announced in April. After agreeing on the truce in Geneva, US officials expected China to facilitate export restrictions on these minerals.
Export controls could have a major impact because the United States depends strongly on China for rare earths. Between 2020 and 2023, 70% of American imports of compounds and rare land metals came from the country, according to a American geological investigation report.
On Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “the administration actively monitors China’s compliance with the Geneva Trade Agreement” and that US officials “continue to engage in correspondence with their Chinese counterparts”.
Beyond China, rare earths are also presented in the objectives of the United States foreign policy with Ukraine, Greenland and Saudi Arabia.
“Ukraine is a very, very emerging mining industry, and even if it was part of the conversation, we do not really have a cartography of what is economically viable,” said Baskaran.
