Spotlight on American Rare Earths, page-1603

The New York Times has a lengthy article on its website today, “The United States is entering an array of agreements to secure the critical minerals necessary for the energy transition, but it’s not clear which of the arrangements can succeed.” Mostly a collection of quotes from government and industry sources who say “on the one hand this but on the other hand that.”

It’s enough to convince you that battery metals and other critical minerals can’t be mined in the US for economic and environmental reasons, so the question is how much we hold our nose to buy from countries other than China.

One piece of news, “On Saturday, the White House said it planned to ask Congress to add Australia to a list of countries where the Pentagon can fund critical mineral projects, criteria that currently only applies to Canada.”

And for those who haven’t figured this out yet, “The demand for minerals in the United States has been spurred in large part by President Biden’s climate law, which provided tax incentives for investments in the electric vehicle supply chain, particularly in the final assembly of batteries. But [Cullen Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics] said the law appeared to be having more limited success in rapidly increasing the number of domestic mines that would supply those new factories.”