Rare Minerals, Boating with Bezos
When you hear the phrase mineral deficiency, you first thought is probably about calcium or iron or some other shortage that can affect your health. But companies and countries can also experience mineral deficiencies, and right now, as The Verge reports, there’s a new cold war is brewing over rare earth minerals. The need for these rare elements is nothing new. You’ve been using them in your phone, your electric vehicle, and your nuclear submarine for years. But the tariff wars have made the mineral wars a more urgent issue. “The future of everything from smartphones, to military equipment, to electric vehicles hangs on 17 rare earth minerals and the magnets that they’re made into. And China, the world’s largest refiner and producer, is tightening its grip and threatening the US’ largest automakers … Over the last 30 years, China has methodically cornered the market on mining and refining rare earth minerals, which are used to produce a variety of common items like passenger vehicles and everyday electronics. In the wake of US President Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive trade war, China is leveraging its position as the world’s largest producer, at the expense of the American auto industry.” Oddly, rare earths aren’t necessarily all that rare. “Rather, they’re found everywhere in very low concentrations. Rare earth ores are easy to extract. They’re available all over the world, but they are very difficult to separate … If a new mine came online today, it wouldn’t really matter, either. The US no longer possesses the equipment to turn rare earths into rare earth magnets — those largely are made in, and come from, China.” Resources like these are often just underneath the surface, both when it comes to digging for them and when it comes to geopolitics. Consider that the US just strong-armed Ukraine into a minerals deal and that another region rich in these elements is Greenland.
+ The US and Brazil are two of the countries trying to catch up a bit with China. But there are many challenges and a lot of ground to make up. WSJ (Gift Article): Rare-Earths Plants Are Popping Up Outside China.
+ A US mining company called Molycorp had a head start in the rare earths business. For decades, “the US had the majority of the world’s rare earth production and a lead in processing rare earths and producing permanent magnets. The problem…is that Molycorp couldn’t produce enough rare earths to feed the growing demand. So, in the 1980s, Molycorp made the fateful decision to start doing business with China.” The Hustle with the dirt on minerals: What the hell are rare earth elements?
+ Rare earths are just one of the elements that makes this a winning moment for China. You don’t have to dig too deep to find the others: “Mr. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the pillars of American power and innovation. His tariffs are endangering U.S. companies’ access to global markets and supply chains. He is slashing public research funding and gutting our universities, pushing talented researchers to consider leaving for other countries. He wants to roll back programs for technologies like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing and is wiping out American soft power in large swaths of the globe.” Kyle Chan in the NYT (Gift Article): In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant. Of course, as Chan argues, “Avoiding that grim scenario means making policy choices — today — that should be obvious and already have bipartisan support: investing in research and development; supporting academic, scientific and corporate innovation; forging economic ties with countries around the world; and creating a welcoming and attractive climate for international talent and capital.” Uh oh.
Denial Ain’t Just a Dry Riverbed in Egypt
“Around the world, countries are racing to adapt to a rapidly warming planet, reduce pollution and build clean energy. China, the only other superpower, has made a strategic decision to adopt clean energy and then sell it abroad, dominating the global markets for electric vehicles, solar panels and other technologies. Even Saudi Arabia, the second-largest producer of oil after the United States, is spending heavily on wind and solar power.” But this is another area where the new American exceptionalism has emerged. It’s not just that America is shutting down many, many green energy initiatives. We’re also denying the environmental realities that make them necessary (and good business). NYT (Gift Article): The U.S. Under Trump: Alone in Its Climate Denial.
Another Perfect Phone Call
Trump held a two-hour call with Putin to reignite ceasefire talks. “Trump also spoke with with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders in hopes of making progress toward a ceasefire. ‘The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.'” (OK, well that clears that up.) AP: Following his call with Putin, Trump says Russia and Ukraine will begin ceasefire talks ‘immediately.’ JD Vance added more ridiculousness to the discussion: “It takes two to tango…if Russia is not willing to do that, then we’re eventually just going to have to say, this is not our war. It’s Joe Biden’s war, it’s Vladimir Putin’s war.”
+ Feeling optimistic? Not too many Ukrainians are. Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Nobody in Ukraine Thinks the War Will End Soon. “I asked the audience at the Lviv Media Forum whether any of them expected a cease-fire soon. About 200 journalists and editors were in the room. No one raised their hand. Many laughed.”
You Cannes-not Be Serious
“So let’s just take stock: a $500 million megayacht, burning diesel and lined with possibly illicit teak, floating into the Riviera so its passenger can be honored for protecting the environment. We are through the looking glass.” The Bezos Cannes-tastrophe: Starring Jeff Bezos as himself, Lauren Sánchez as an environmentalist, and Cannes as the end-stage symptom of elite delusion. Good stuff from Louis Pisano on the craziness at Cannes: “Even good intentions buckle under the weight of bad optics. You can’t ride in on a carbon-belching sea fortress and accept an award for climate advocacy. That’s like setting a forest fire and accepting a plaque for your marshmallow-roasting technique.”
+ The Verge: “How long after a sovereign ruler of a repressive state murders one of your columnists should you make a deal with him? The answer, it turns out, is a little over six years.” Jeff Bezos makes his most ghoulish deal yet.
Extra, Extra
Biden’s Cancer: “‘Cancer touches us all. Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.” Joe Biden thanks supporters after his cancer diagnosis. Biden led with empathy. Now he needs ours. But don’t even try explaining that to the MAGA crowd. Probably the worst response came, predictably, from Don Jr: “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage give metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup?” Three quick things: First, she’s a doctor of Education. Second, there are four stages of cancer. Third, I don’t think hell exists, but this guy makes me hope it does.
+ Let Them Eat Tariffs: “So with the current Big, Beautiful Bill, we are looking at a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary Americans to those at the top of American society.” Heather Cox Richardson with a solid overview of the budget bill moving through the House. Meanwhile, Trump is demanding that Walmart not raise prices and instead “eat the tariffs” themselves. They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the tariffs.
+ Ven Push Comes to Shove: “The Supreme Court on Monday allowed, for now, the Trump administration to remove legal protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans now living in the U.S., under a program that had protected them from deportation known as Temporary Protected Status.” This is from a state dept travel advisory: “Do not travel to or remain in Venezuela due to the high risk of wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure.”
+ Paramount Screws News: “The president of CBS News was forced out of her post on Monday, the latest shock wave to hit one of the country’s most prominent television news divisions amid an ongoing showdown involving President Trump, CBS and its parent company, Paramount.” NYT (Gift Article): Head of CBS News Is Forced Out Amid Tensions With Trump. The interests of news consumers, and the country in general, are not aligned with the interests of media owners. And it’s getting worse. Of course, this bending is not exclusive to news owners. Verizon ends DEI policies to get FCC’s blessing for its $20 billion Frontier deal.
+ Pardons and Payouts: Trump administration to pay $5 million to family of Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt.
+ Stalk Photos: “This is the facial recognition technology nightmare scenario that we have been worried about … This is the government giving itself the power to track anyone — for that matter, everyone — as we go about our lives walking around in public.” WaPo: Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras. (For what it’s worth, I don’t see much evidence that citizens are all that worried about this kind of surveillance.)
+ Selling You Out: You’re not just being tracked in NOLA. You’re being tracked all over the place. Wired: CFPB Quietly Kills Rule to Shield Americans From Data Brokers. “Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has canceled plans to more tightly regulate the sale of Americans’ sensitive personal data.”
Bottom of the News
“The other day she told me about something that’s spread like wildfire through the knitting community: chickens. Knitted chickens. They’re roughly the size of a throw pillow and are stuffed with material to be soft and huggable. Everybody’s making them.” Why Is Everybody Knitting Chickens? (Could it have something to do with the price of eggs?)
+ For the SNL season finale, Colin Jost and Michael Che performed their annual joke swap.
