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Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals

China hits back at US tariffs with rare earth export controls – by Amy Lv, Lewis Jackson and Eric Onstad (Reuters – April 4, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

China placed export restrictions on key rare earth elements on Friday as part of its sweeping response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, potentially squeezing supply to the U.S. and the West of minerals vital to everything from defense to electric cars.

China produces around 90% of the world’s refined rare earths, a group of 17 elements used across the defense, electric vehicle, clean energy and electronics industries. The United States imports most of its rare earths, and most come from China.

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NICO project in Northwest Territories could establish domestic bismuth supply – by Amanda Stutt (Mining.com – March 31, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Bismuth prices surged to all-time highs on the European spot market in March, a more than six-fold rise since January, as China’s export controls squeeze supplies of the mineral used in atomic research, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

China in February announced plans to impose export controls on five key metals — tungsten, tellurium, molybdenum, indium and bismuth — in response to US President Trump’s import tariffs. Bismuth is a scarce industrial metal that has characteristics similar to lead, but is non-toxic, and the industry is currently developing uses for replacing lead.

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Minister Lecce talks about his new expanded portfolio, meetings in Washington – by Barbara Patrocinio (iPolitics.ca – April 1, 2025)

https://www.ipolitics.ca/

“The Americans are waking up to the reality that they are dependent on China for critical minerals, and they need an alternative,” Lecce said. “Ontario is the answer.”

A day before President Trump is poised to announce tariffs that experts say will harm the economy in both countries, Ontario’s Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce went to D.C. trying to position the province as Washington’s most reliable partner.

“The Americans are waking up to the reality that they are dependent on China for critical minerals, and they need an alternative,” Lecce said. “Ontario is the answer.” Minister Lecce attended the SAFE Summit in Washington, a meeting with the global leaders in energy, transportation and supply chain.

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America’s long Arctic love affair is culminating in Trump’s designs on Greenland – by Peter Harmsen (Globe and Mail – April 2, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Peter Harmsen is a journalist and the author of Fury and Ice: Greenland, the United States and Germany in World War II.

The historically minded among us may have sensed a certain déjà vu this weekend when U.S. President Donald Trump talked to NBC News about the role military force could play in gaining control of Greenland, currently an autonomous territory of long-time ally Denmark: “I don’t take anything off the table.”

After all, in 1940, when the Americans were slowly waking up from their isolationist slumber to side with the Western democracies in the struggle against fascism, they took a break from this grand mission to threaten Canada and Britain with armed might to keep Greenland to themselves.

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Column: Europe’s future metals strategy hindered by current crisis – by Andy Home (Reuters – March 31, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

The European Commission has identified 47 strategic projects which it hopes will kickstart the region’s critical minerals sector and reduce its dependence on imports, particularly from China. But even as European policymakers work to build a future industrial base, they are facing a crisis in the region’s existing metals sector.

Chinese over-capacity and high energy prices have accelerated the long-term decline of European steel and aluminum production. The latest threat, however, is coming from the United States. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, particularly the increased tariff on aluminum imports, risk displacing a flood of metal into Europe.

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EU selects 47 strategic projects to secure critical minerals access – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – March 25, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

The European Union (EU) has published its first list of strategic projects strengthening the local extraction, processing, and recycling of 14 of the 17 materials it deems critical for its energy transition and security.

The selection of the 47 projects mark a key step in implementing the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which sets targets for 2030, including extracting 10% of the EU’s annual consumption, processing 40%, and recycling 25% of these essential materials.

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Why Sudbury can be a critical minerals processing hub to the world – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 28, 2025)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Mayor Paul Lefebvre pitches a compelling case to the Toronto corporate crowd to expand nickel processing capacity in the city

Sudbury has a strategic role to play in Canada’s natural resources security and economic sovereignty. Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre delivered that message to an audience of corporate leaders and influencers at the Canadian Club Toronto, March 27, by inviting strategic partners and government funders to come north and invest in critical metals processing capacity in the city.

Lefebvre took part in a panel discussion that Canada is falling short in realizing its full potential due to the lack of investment in mid-stream processing that’s needed to feed the burgeoning battery, energy and defence sectors.

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Is mining critical minerals better than extracting fossil fuels? – by Katarina Zimmer (Grist.org – March 26, 2025)

https://grist.org/

Extracting resources from the Earth always comes with costs. As we race toward a cleaner, greener future, there is a risk of repeating the abuses of mining for coal and other fossil fuels.

As renewable energy gathers steam around the world, the harms of mining its mineral components continue to grow. On the environmental front, for example, there’s the destruction of Indonesian rainforests to mine nickel and the draining of precious South American groundwater reserves to obtain lithium.

There’s also the human toll, which can be seen in forced displacement and child labor exploitation in the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as violence toward Indigenous people living on nickel-studded lands in the Philippines. The devastation raises the question: Is the world better off just sticking with the status quo? With these factors, is renewable energy and clean technology any better than fossil fuels?

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OPINION: Trump is right to fear a Canada-Europe team-up. But Canada must rise to the challenge first – by Aaron Burnett (Globe and Mail – March 28, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Aaron Burnett is a German-Canadian geopolitics and security analyst based at Berlin’s Democratic Strategy Initiative.

The spectre of a deeper trade relationship between Canada and Europe keeps U.S. President Donald Trump up at night – if his latest social-media rant threatening higher tariffs on both is any clue.

And that means, all the more, that Canada must seek closer ties to Europe. Mr. Trump is a man who defers to strength and bullies the weak. If a Canada-Europe team-up strikes such a raw nerve, then that means it’s the right move.

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INSIGHT: Myanmar rebels disrupt China rare earth trade, sparking regional scramble – by Devjyot Ghoshal, Poppy Mcpherson, Amy Lv and Neha Arora (Reuters – March 27, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

When armed rebels seized northern Myanmar’s rare-earths mining belt in October, they dealt a blow to the country’s embattled military junta – and wrested control of a key global resource. By capturing sites that produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) rebels have been able to throttle the supply of minerals used in wind turbines and electric vehicles, sending prices of one key element skyward.

The KIA is seeking leverage against neighbouring China, which supports the junta and has invested heavily in rare earths mining in Myanmar’s Kachin state, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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Trump’s order to boost mining in the U.S. could end up helping Canadian companies – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 24, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

Latest U.S. effort to reduce dependence on China for rare earths and critical minerals

Canadian mining insiders say their industry could ultimately benefit if United States President Donald Trump’s fixation on boosting his country’s production of minerals persists. Last Thursday, Trump invoked presidential emergency powers and signed an executive order “to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent” as a matter of national and economic security.

The order cites “our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” which some say is the U.S.’s latest effort to reduce its dependence on China, which controls large parts of the world’s rare earths and critical minerals supply chains.

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Wab Kinew ignores Manitoba’s trillion-dollar critical minerals opportunity – by Kevin Klein (Winnipeg Sun – March 21, 2025)

https://winnipegsun.com/

While New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt and her Liberal government are making serious moves to capitalize on their province’s critical mineral resources, here in Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew and his NDP government are silent. Not a word. Not a dollar. Not even a photo op with a hardhat and shovel.

This is a missed opportunity on a scale that’s hard to ignore — unless, of course, you’re the NDP. On Wednesday, New Brunswick’s Natural Resources Minister John Herron stood in their legislature and said what every leader who takes economic growth seriously should be saying. He told his team to get a strategy together to mine their rich deposits of critical minerals.

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China flexes rare earth dominance with million-tonne discovery – by Staff (Mining.com – March 19, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

China solidified its global dominance in rare earth elements mining with a new discovery that its experts say is likely to be the largest middle and heavy rare earth deposit in the country. The discovery was first reported in the Chinese paper Workers’ Daily late January, then confirmed and published by the China Geological Survey (CGS) under the Ministry of Natural Resources.

According to the CGS, the deposit could host as much as 1.15 million tonnes of resources containing key rare earth elements such as praseodymium, neodymium, dysprosium and terbium, which are being sought after globally. Once tapped, it would yield about 470,000 tonnes of these strategic minerals, it estimated.

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Trump to expand critical mineral production using wartime powers – by Ari Natter and Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – March 20, 2025)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

President Donald Trump is invoking emergency powers to boost the ability of the US to produce critical minerals — and potentially coal — as part of a broad effort to ramp up the development of domestic natural resources and make the country less reliant on foreign imports.

An executive order signed by the president Thursday taps the Defense Production Act as part of an effort to provide financing, loans and other investment support to domestically process critical minerals and rare earth elements, according to a White House official. The US International Development Finance Corporation, working with the Department of Defense, will provide financing for new mineral production projects.

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Putin Allies Woo Trump with Rare Earth Mineral Deposits – by Brendan Cole and John Feng (Newsweek Magazine – March 19, 2025)

https://www.newsweek.com/

Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin has said he is wants to ramp up exploration of rare earth reserves in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine, hinting that “foreign partners” may be brought into the fold amid the Trump-drive thaw.

Potanin, who owns the metallurgical giant Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) and like most oligarchs in Russia, has close links with President Vladimir Putin, said there are many resources in Russia which remain unexplored.

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