[Mick]

It always seemed to me that the proposal was nonsense. Why would we invest millions or billions in rare earth deposits next door to Putin and not in the continental USA.  We need to develop our local deposits and I was under the impression we had some fairly sizeable deposits now being developed.  If push comes to shove we do not want to be dependent on sources to easily shut down by potential adversaries.

It seems to me that Putin and/or his successors will one day occupy Ukraine if not take it over outright, unless Europe gets its collective act together, since it doesn't appear that there will be any American support. Coupled with the fact that it takes a long runway to develop rare earth materials, it seems to me (to your point), there are more easily accessible rare earth minerals available in America. And whatever our future relationship becomes, I would imagine they would be more easily accessed in Canada and/or Greenland vs. Ukraine.

There are 17 rare earth metals (scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). China produces 69% of global supply. Here's the total rare earth reserves, expressed in tons, by country.

China 44M
Vietnam 22M
Brazil 21M
Russia 10M
India 6.9M
Australia 5.7M
United States 1.8M
Greenland 1.5M
Tanzania 890K
Canada 830K
South Africa 790K
Thailand 4.5K

[Mick]

It always seemed to me that the proposal was nonsense. Why would we invest millions or billions in rare earth deposits next door to Putin and not in the continental USA.  We need to develop our local deposits and I was under the impression we had some fairly sizeable deposits now being developed.  If push comes to shove we do not want to be dependent on sources to easily shut down by potential adversaries.

It seems to me that Putin and/or his successors will one day occupy Ukraine if not take it over outright, unless Europe gets its collective act together, since it doesn't appear that there will be any American support. Coupled with the fact that it takes a long runway to develop rare earth materials, it seems to me (to your point), there are more easily accessible rare earth minerals available in America. And whatever our future relationship becomes, I would imagine they would be more easily accessed in Canada and/or Greenland vs. Ukraine.

There are 17 rare earth metals (scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, and lutetium). China produces 69% of global supply. Here's the total rare earth reserves, expressed in tons, by country.

China 44M
Vietnam 22M
Brazil 21M
Russia 10M
India 6.9M
Australia 5.7M
United States 1.8M
Greenland 1.5M
Tanzania 890K
Canada 830K
South Africa 790K
Thailand 4.5K