Experts say proposed deal with U.S. makes no sense
When a seemingly routine Oval Office press conference degenerated into a shouting match on 28 February, the world looked on in astonishment. That is, except for actual experts in rare earths and other critical materials, who understood all along that the proposed "deal" that motivated the press conference was nonsensical and could only be viewed as political theater. The meeting was supposed to announce an agreement under which Ukraine would provide U.S. companies with access to critical minerals deposits in exchange for the tens of billions of dollars in military aid already provided by the U.S. government. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the agreement would have established "a reconstruction investment fund with joint U.S. and Ukraine ownership. Ukraine will contribute 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all Ukrainian government-owned natural resource assets into the fund." Ukraine has substantial reserves or deposits of lithium, graphite, manganese, titanium, gallium, and nickel. However, in describing the proposed deal, president Donald J. Trump and other principals quickly zeroed in on the rare earths, for which the US has for years been spending billions of dollars in an attempt to secure stable supplies. The Trump administration, like those before it, seems to grasp the importance of these materials. At his confirmation hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, "If we stay on the road we're on right now, in less than 10 years, virtually everything that matters to us in life will depend on whether China will allow us to have it or not … They have come to dominate the critical-mineral industry supplies throughout the world." The Ukraine rare-earths deal now seems endangered, to put it mildly. But its apparent failure—and the way it failed—is revealing of how the Trump administration is likely to pursue supplies of strategically vital rare earths and other critical materials in the context…