Why Trump must make friends and allies in the near-East if he wants to escape China’s stranglehold on the world’s vital rare-earth metals

We’re in a new world – whether we like it or not.

Globalization, the deluded rush to give away our manufacturing base to foreign powers, is finally grinding to a halt.

People, we gather, do want borders, after all. It seems we do want our neighbors to be gainfully employed manufacturing goods which we then purchase.

And it turns out that if we want to secure our own economic future, we have to control the means by which it can be secured.   

Who knew?

But if the West – led by the White House – is finally waking up, there’s no ignoring the damage that’s already done by globalization. Or the parlous state in which we find ourselves, or the gargantuan task that lies ahead.

This is not least when it comes to obtaining the minerals we require, the key to the high-tech future in which so many of our hopes are invested – substances such as graphite, lithium and the famous ‘rare earths’, which have a bewildering range of applications from advanced electronics to biomedicine.

Donald Trump and President Recep Erdogan already see eye to eye. Now it turns out that Turkey has rare earth minerals

Samples of rare earth minerals from left, Cerium oxide, Bastnasite, Neodymium oxide and Lanthanum carbonate 

An open-pit titanium mine in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine

Minerals policy is now at the heart of a new Great Game as industrialized nations compete around the planet to secure supplies.

But America has arrived late to the scrap and is now fighting with one hand tied behind its back.

The US addiction to cheap imported goods – and the dangerously fragile supply chains that supply those products – has left the richest nation in the world dependent on foreign powers for key supplies, not least an expansionist China which now controls and refines most of the world’s 17 rare earths.

Through its vast campaign of investment and deal-making around the world, particularly in Africa, China has a dominant position when it comes to other key metals, also, including copper and lithium.

America only has itself to blame, of course, both for creating dangerously stretched supply chains and then failing to recognize the consequences.

But if the republic has been asleep, Trump is determined to rouse it from its slumbers as the recent Ukraine minerals deal shows.

Ukraine is estimated to control as much as a fifth of the world’s rare earth and essential minerals including titanium, zirconium, graphite and lithium, which is essential in making batteries for electric vehicles. In future America will have access.

Note, too, the president’s stance on Canada and Greenland, two territories he says – to general outrage – that the US should annex. 

These northern landmasses certainly are important for their strategic position, as has been widely noted, but also – and this has attracted less attention – for the mineral deposits they control and their proximity to the Arctic, where yet more might be discovered.

The Ukraine deal is certainly welcome progress towards freeing the US from the grip of China, which currently has a near monopoly on the extraction of the 17 rare earths -chemicals such as yttrium, europium and neodymium, which is used to make the powerful magnets used in loudspeakers, computer hard drives, EV motors and jet engines

Yttrium and europium are used to manufacture television and computer screens because of the way they display colors.

But the Ukraine deal is only one small step along the road, and an uncertain one at that. Huge investment – and time – are needed to mine and process these minerals if the Ukraine deal is to work for either country. 

By itself, the agreement with Kyiv is nowhere near enough to secure the materials that American technology demands.

The US must look elsewhere on the map – and show similar diplomatic energy and creativity, too.

That’s why, for example, Washington is pursuing what could turn out to be an even more significant deal for metals in the war-torn Great Lakes region of Africa.

According to Reuters, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has approached the Trump administration with a Ukrainian-style proposal  in response to the rapid advance of the Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group in the east of the country.

Congo hopes Washington investment would help deter the insurgents, just as Ukraine hopes to deter the Russian advance.

But I would argue there are other solutions to hand which are both easier and less inherently risky.

Turkey, for example, has found what appears to be the world’s second-largest reserve of rare earth metals in central Anatolia.

Rare earth metals are vital for manufacturing advanced electronics, including smartphones

A laborer works at a site of a rare earth metals mine in Jiangxi province. China has a near monopoly on refining rare earths

Where China has some 800 million tons in its deposits, Turkey is a close second with an estimated total close to 700 million tons.

Moreover, the mineral field in Turkey is said to be close to the surface, suggesting that their extraction comparatively straightforward.

Then there are the rare earth deposits in Kazakhstan – another Turkic-speaking country – to the east.

Kazakhstan is said to have almost one million tons of cerium, lanthanum, neodymium and yttrium, elements used as components in devices such as smartphones, digital cameras and computer hard disks.

‘Four prospective areas have been identified within the site with total estimated rare earth reserves reaching 935,400 tons,’ according to the Kazakh Ministry of Industry and Construction.

If this is correct, that would make it the third largest deposit of rare earths.

Washington already has good relations with Turkey, which not only has substantial deposits of these minerals but is the cultural leader of the Turkic speaking near East – a region that includes Kazakhstan.

Donald Trump and President Recep Erdogan already see eye to eye.  

Ukraine and Kazakhstan are among the countries to discover significant deposits of rare earth metals

But it would be wise for Washington to strengthen that relationship still further, and not just for the sake of rare earth minerals.

Hydrocarbons still matter, after all – and as Trump knows better than most – and will continue to be essential for many years to come.

Here, too, Turkey and its neighbors are major players, controlling the vital network of pipelines that delivers oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to an energy-hungry West.

Meanwhile, it is Ankara that is playing a vital role in mediating between Moscow and Kyiv in an attempt to bring the bloodshed in Ukraine to an end.

We are no longer in a unipolar world. And, as Washington belatedly now accepts, American foreign policy will have to be  considerably more agile than under the catastrophic Biden years.

Suddenly, the US needs friends all around the globe. And some friendships are not merely valuable, but vital.

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