Prices rise; Hastings-Wyloo: "An Odious Bag of Dog Excrement"?; MP 2024 Operating Loss widens 9.5 Times YOY; Defense Metals PFS; ASM's RE Resource; Meteoric, Appia, etc.
Rare Earth 21 February 2025 #169
Today
We bring you today a quick and dirty about tariffs, potential trade war in rare earths and related headlines, some very interesting science finds, incl. 55,000 bogus scholary papers, articles that describe the stalling electric vehicle market and of course a lot of junior rare earth miner announcements, with the appropriate comments.
While proposing new rare earth regulation, China promises to review the negative list for foreign investment. Rare earth is already allowed, but no RE mining for foreigners in China.
Apart from scanning through the usual Hastings hype and the terrible MP Materials numbers, there is also a deep dive into the resource of ASM and a calculation of what Defense Metals preliminary feasibility study really means.
Last but not least, prices are rising and a new pricing system in China.
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Tariffs
The tariff- and other threats are part of a shock & awe strategy of the current U.S. administration. We are not sure if tariff measures threatened or taken will be sustainable, as U.S. consumers will be affected. U.S. GDP depends a lot on consumption.
China and other affected countries going for WTO settlement may not work, as the U.S. may simply ignore any award - international norms don’t count anymore for the current U.S. administration.
Actually the WTO, established on 1 January 1995 as a successor of the General Agreement on Tariffs & Trade (GATT), may fall apart on the current U.S. administration’s unilateral actions.
If the U.S. administration banks on shock & awe working, it may be mistaken.
China’s Xi Jin Ping was in no rush to accept the U.S. president’s phone call - which in turn prompted the U.S. president to loudly claim that it is actually the U.S. who were not in a rush to talk.
Whatever, China is likely to call what may well be considered a bluff of unsustainable tariffs.
Time is not on the U.S. administration’s side. Everyone knows: it is 1,352 days plus the rest of today until the next U.S. election, by which time Trump may have turned into as an old geezer as former President Biden is.
In terms of rare earth
Regarding the downward spiralling trade war, China has massive capacities of rare earths and rare earth permanent magnets. It is not likely to impose blanket export bans. But it could withhold single products.
For example, it could stop lanthanum exports, which would potentially send gasoline prices in the U.S. skywards, much to the “delight” of the supporters of the current U.S. administration. MP Materials could replace these dirt-cheap imports - after a while, and at a price.
Yttrium and samarium are also candidates. And withholding lamp phosphors for lighting would leave the U.S. literally in the dark after a while, with domestic supply of lighting products dropping to 20% relatively quickly.
Of course the U.S. could import lighting from other countries. An expensive affair, since the current U.S. administration wants to impose tariffs on everything against everyone & sundry.
How about just a little bit of competence in rare earths?
Practically all U.S. rare earth juniors went for the hype of magnets and magnet rare earths, a non-existent market in the U.S.. No-one ever considered what the U.S. really need in terms of rare earth.
Thanks to mindless hype, lobbyism and jockeying for handouts, there is now an open invitation for China to play the U.S. like a grand piano in rare earths. The question is only, if the program will contain Jerry Lee Lewis or rather Frédéric Chopin.
U.S. Administration
Mapped: Where are Ukraine’s rare earth mineral resources and why does Trump want them?
Ukraine is sitting on one of Europe’s largest deposits of critical minerals, including lithium and titanium, much of which is untapped. According to the Institute of Geology, Ukraine possesses rare earth elements such as lanthanum and cerium, used in TVs and lighting; neodymium, used in wind turbines and EV batteries; and erbium and yttrium, whose applications range from nuclear power to lasers. The EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has scandium reserves but detailed data is classified.
Mr Zelensky has been trying to develop these resources, estimated to be worth more than £12 trillion, based on figures provided by Forbes Ukraine, for years.
In 2021, he offered outside investors tax breaks and investment rights to help mine these minerals. These efforts were suspended when the full-scale invasion started a year later.
As per our post of 25 November 2024, the apatite resources of rather doubtful rare earth content and value marked by the Ukraine Geological Survey should now be under Russian control in Donetsk.
Who is conning whom?
Ukraine hands US reworked rare earths deal
It is unclear what is in the deal and whether the US draft contained security provisions for Ukraine that it desperately seeks to protect it from a future Russian invasion in the event a peace can be negotiated.
Mr Trump, who has not said whether he will continue vital military assistance to Ukraine, has said he wants $500 billion in rare earth minerals from Kyiv and that Washington’s support needs to be “secured”.
Incredible. It could actually be funny.
Related
Exclusive-US Lobbied Greenland Rare Earths Developer Tanbreez Not to Sell to China
Greg Barnes, CEO of privately held Tanbreez Mining, said U.S. officials who visited the project in southern Greenland twice last year had repeatedly shared a message with the cash-strapped company: do not sell the large deposit to a Beijing-linked buyer.
"There was a lot of pressure not to sell to China," Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals, told Reuters. Barnes accepted payment of $5 million cash and $211 million in Critical Metals stock for Tanbreez, far less than Chinese firms offered, Sage said.
This is hilarious, too! No-one in China would touch a worthless eudialyte deposit like Tanbreez.
As usual when it comes to corporate fog, vapour announcements and mindless hype of junior rare earth miners, Thomson Reuters is never far.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
President Trump Places His Early Mark on Export Controls
The State Department is also expected to play a major role in export control policy in the new administration. Marco Rubio has been confirmed as Secretary of State; as a senator, Secretary Rubio advocated for BIS to adopt a “blanket ‘presumption of denial’ posture” for all “critical technology” products being exported to China. He introduced a bill in 2023 to require such a presumption of denial for all Chinese and Russian entities. Jacob Helberg, a technology policy expert and an advocate for stricter export control policies with respect to China, has been nominated for the position of Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. In addition, Thomas DiNanno, an arms control expert, has been nominated as the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, a position which oversees export controls and counterproliferation policy. It is likely that Helsberg and DiNanno will coordinate closely on export control policy as key decisionmakers.
For as long as the U.S. can still be technology leader, this may work. However, in combination with an anti-immigrant policy that may also chokes-off the flow of talent to the U.S., we may see a slow and steady demise of the U.S. technology lead.
Vietnam
New value chain in circular economy
The plan aims to achieve land, water and mineral resource efficiency levels that rival those of ASEAN's leading countries.
Models of efficient use of natural resources, reuse and recycling of waste, and production and business models applying circular economics are being built, replicated and developed appropriately for each industry, field, and region at each level. This is forming and developing new, sustainable value chains associated with high added value, creating many new jobs through the application of the circular economy while strongly attracting resources from green credit, green bonds and other legal resources for investment projects in developing the circular economy.
By 2035, Vietnam envisions an inclusive circular economy that blends innovation, high competitiveness, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, and social equity.
It is not clear how this would affect Vietnam’s Rare Earth Policy.
//Science
Bogus scientific papers are enriching fraudsters and slowing lifesaving medical research
Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research. These paper mills are profiting by undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives.
It is exceedingly difficult to get a handle on exactly how big the problem is. About 55,000 scholarly papers have been retracted to date, for a variety of reasons, but scientists and companies who screen the scientific literature for telltale signs of fraud estimate that there are many more fake papers circulating – possibly as many as several hundred thousand. This fake research can confound legitimate researchers who must wade through dense equations, evidence, images and methodologies, only to find that they were made up.
Even when bogus papers are spotted – usually by amateur sleuths on their own time – academic journals are often slow to retract the papers, allowing the articles to taint what many consider sacrosanct: the vast global library of scholarly work that introduces new ideas, reviews and other research and discusses findings.
We have enjoyed reading a couple of gravity-defying geologist papers written by rare-earth-related “scholars”.
IAC Mining
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