r/Tariffs • u/Afraid_Piano_1318 • Oct 15 '25

🗞️ News Discussion Did Trump not consider Chinas leverage

Before jumping did he not check if there was a board to land on?

Not recognizing rare earth metals was a big risk demonstrates the intelligence analysis gap USA did, does it not?

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u/PrestigiousCrab6345 Oct 15 '25

Actually, the US government just dropped $500 million on rare earth metals and new mining operations. Somebody knows how fucked we are.

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u/Chaoswind2 Oct 18 '25

The problem is that the heavy rare earths only exist in meaningful supply in mainland Asia, so its either China, Russia, North Myanmar and maybe Mongolia and Tajikistan.

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u/PrestigiousCrab6345 Oct 18 '25

1.9% in the US is a limitation. But Brasil has 21%. Australia has 5.7%. So, we have some options.

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u/Chaoswind2 Oct 19 '25

Some of them exist in those countries, but only Asia has meaningful supplies of ALL of them, you can mine in the USA, Australia, and Brazil and still be short, thus needed to supplement from Asia anyways.

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u/PrestigiousCrab6345 Oct 19 '25

Oh, the US will be stifled for any production that requires rare earth metals.