Donald Trump makes minerals great again
“I want to have security of rare earth,” Donald Trump said in February about a proposed minerals deal with Ukraine. “They have great rare earth.” It’s also one reason he’s obsessed about acquiring Greenland. That’s more about its size on a Mercator map, but I digress.
Trump doesn’t know what he is talking about, as usual. Something about advanced technology needing something, something, rare earth minerals (or rare earths) he could not find on the periodic table. But someone whispered that the U.S. needs to rely less on buying them from China, so here we go.
CNN explains:
Rare earths are ubiquitous in the technologies we rely on every day, from smartphones to wind turbines to LED lights and flat-screen TVs. They’re also crucial for batteries in electric vehicles as well as MRI scanners and cancer treatments.
Rare earths are also essential for the US military. They’re used in F-35 fighter jets, submarines, lasers, satellites, Tomahawk missiles and more, according to a 2025 research note from CSIS.
JV Last on Tuesday pointed to a Trumpish move toward securing domestic supplies of rare earth materials. Specifically (CNBC):
The Defense Department will become the largest shareholder in rare earth miner MP Materials after agreeing to buy $400 million of its preferred stock, the company said Thursday.
MP Materials owns the only operational rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California, about 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Proceeds from the Pentagon investment will be used to expand MP’s rare earths processing capacity and magnet production, the company said.
Shares of MP Materials soared about 50% to close at $45.23. Its market capitalization grew to $7.4 billion, an increase of about $2.5 billion from the previous trading session.
Whaddya bet some of Trump’s pals in Congress bought stock in MP Materials just ahead of the announcement? But I digress.
Let’s digress some more.
A man in the news whose name is as foreign-sounding to white ears as Barack Obama’s might be the latest WWE foreign menace. But Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is instead the winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Among other proposals, Mamdani proposes creating nonprofit, city-owned and subsidized groceries in all five boroughs, “grocery stores whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.”
Trump and the right immediately lashed out. He is a “Communist Lunatic,” said Trump, and threatened to arrest and deport him. Cato and The National Review expressed outrage at the proposal.
Given the Pentagon’s new ownership stake in MP Materials, JV Last points out the obvious problem amidst the right’s smear campaign against Mamdani. Not only has the Pentagon poured $400 million into owning the means of production, Apple has joined in with a $500 million investment of its own, driving share prices even higher. Apple is currently negotiating with Trump over the 25% tariff he wants to levy on iPhones made in China. Shades of the Paramount settlement and its pending merger.
Thus, Last offers, the government “now controls $900 million-worth of MP because Apple has agreed to become its junior partner in the venture. There’s your actual, real-deal socialism.”
Last adds:
And not only is this naked corruption so routine as to no longer even be worth noticing, but the people who have the vapors about Zohran Mamdani’s five grocery stores are silent as the grave.
Socialism for me but not for thee.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (Thursday July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense