Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act launches $7.5B investment in US mineral independence, but demand challenges threaten the ambitious supply-side strategy.
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Written by: Daniel
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Written by: Daniel
NEWS Trump’s Rare Earth Gambit: A Beautiful Supply Chain Without Demand?
- Thread starter DOC
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A couple of problems with this premise, it assumes that there is going to be a surplus of Rare Earth producing mines, and that the predictions of an explosion in new Products that use RE magnets will not eventuate.
The Mountain Pass deposit is nearing the end of its useful life, if it were not for the US$110/kg guarantee I doubt very much if they would be able to afford to go underground. A handful of other US projects are mostly too small, too low a grade, or are in the "not in my backyard" category. Of the overseas Projects, it is only a handful of Brazilian, Australian and Angolan deposits that can currently fit the size/grade constraints to be considered a Tier one producer.
As for demand, America has but a small percentage of the World's population, their days of being the driving consumer economy are long gone. That there is a revolution in Traction power underway is an understatement, EV's have been gaining market share but still have a long way to go, large scale Megawatt traction engines for ships, trains and aeroplanes are starting to appear, the Chinese are talking about Mag-lev which will take several hundred thousand tons of NdPr, and then you have Robots. Did I see mention of a Billion units by 2040? even at 3kg of magnets per unit, that is 1 Million tons of NdPr, ie greater than the mapped Resource of Longonjo,
The Mountain Pass deposit is nearing the end of its useful life, if it were not for the US$110/kg guarantee I doubt very much if they would be able to afford to go underground. A handful of other US projects are mostly too small, too low a grade, or are in the "not in my backyard" category. Of the overseas Projects, it is only a handful of Brazilian, Australian and Angolan deposits that can currently fit the size/grade constraints to be considered a Tier one producer.
As for demand, America has but a small percentage of the World's population, their days of being the driving consumer economy are long gone. That there is a revolution in Traction power underway is an understatement, EV's have been gaining market share but still have a long way to go, large scale Megawatt traction engines for ships, trains and aeroplanes are starting to appear, the Chinese are talking about Mag-lev which will take several hundred thousand tons of NdPr, and then you have Robots. Did I see mention of a Billion units by 2040? even at 3kg of magnets per unit, that is 1 Million tons of NdPr, ie greater than the mapped Resource of Longonjo,