REDUCE DEPENDENCE

“What the President achieved over the last week? I actually think he's achieved something. So Iran showed that it has control over the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. That's actually very important and a major loss to the United States. When someone reveals a weakness that you had, that's as bad as them creating a weakness. And so if eight weeks ago, Iran didn't understand itself to have leverage, it had never had the opportunity to test it. Today it does.”

“The US Iran ceasefire expires tomorrow and tensions are mounting. Both countries' delegations are headed to Pakistan to engage in talks ahead of the deadline. President Trump said it's quote, highly unlikely that the ceasefire would be extended if a deal was not reached before Wednesday. He also said the US would continue to blockade the Strait of Hormuz until a deal is signed.”

“What if we learn that this world is wildly interdependent? More so than most of us appreciate. The moment you try and chop off an arm, all of a sudden you discover interdependencies and what there seems to be. At least those two stories tell us that that may be a fairly general thing.”

“Another way of saying that is we've lost the ability to contract over time. There is no NAFTA. There literally can't be a NAFTA. If I were to say, Ed, I'm going to marry you, which would be beautiful. But I just didn't come home on Tuesday, and then I came back a week later, and then I didn't come home on Thursday. And I didn't cook dinner for you on Friday. Are we married?”

“That's about fifteen, almost twenty years of you knocking on doors, being the Cassandra. I don't know if you were you were you a popular dinner party guest constantly warning people of the danger of being dependent on rare earths? And and, Emily, I didn't do it in a, the sky is falling way. And I spent a lot more time at the dinner parties talking about the goodness of rare earths, not not the downside. But I I talked to every person that sits next to me on either side on the plane. I will talk to people in the airport. I will talk to everybody to educate them on what these issues are and why they are important.”

“And what really strikes me is this is a state driven effort. This is the US government coming in and trying to set a price for rare earths, investing money in companies, even buying stakes in them. And, Katie, this is this is how China dominated the rare earth sector. This is what The US is now doing.”

“They established the rare earth office maybe in 1975, so mid nineteen seventies. In my mind, a rare earths office would be bejeweled with various rare earths samples. The door would be covered in beautiful rare earths, but I suspect that's not what I should picture here. I I don't actually know, but my guess is that that's not what occurred, that that it was maybe one or two people in a nondescript office that were charged with, undertaking activities and coordinating with other agencies to prioritize rare earth mining.”

“Very quickly, China released a bunch of rare earth product on the global market, and the price for rare earth products, the exact kind that Mark was going to refine, the price for those drop. They sent a very strong message. You were not going to produce that much rare earths in today's market. And you know this for a fact? It's it's nothing more than an allegation, but I I don't think there's anybody in the rare earth world that would, suggest something other than what I just suggested.”

“What the President achieved over the last week? I actually think he's achieved something. So Iran showed that it has control over the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. That's actually very important and a major loss to the United States. When someone reveals a weakness that you had, that's as bad as them creating a weakness. And so if eight weeks ago, Iran didn't understand itself to have leverage, it had never had the opportunity to test it. Today it does.”

“What Mark found out was before his time, like in the nineteen sixties, the CEO of Molycorp had invited a whole bunch of people to come and see how the world's rare earth monopoly does its thing, how they mine the stuff at Mountain Pass, the elaborate processes of refining and turning it into useful stuff, and that group of visitors, all from China. They could wander around, take pictures, and whatnot. They took all that information back, and they became, you know, what is today the world's best processors of rare earth materials in the world.”

“There's a Chinese fishing boat captain who's sailing through these islands, and Japan claims that he ventures into their territorial waters. There's a standoff. The Chinese boat captain ends up ramming a Japanese coast guard vessel. They detain him. They end up arresting him. And it sparks this huge outcry in China. There is a political decision made in China that they're going to make a stand on this, punish Japan over arresting their guy, and most notably, China informally, quietly just stopped selling all rare earth products to Japan. Japan suddenly realizes that their car industry and their electronics industry is totally dependent on rare earth products.”

“What if we learn that this world is wildly interdependent? More so than most of us appreciate. The moment you try and chop off an arm, all of a sudden you discover interdependencies and what there seems to be. At least those two stories tell us that that may be a fairly general thing.”

“The administration has proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, which makes me think, okay, this is all noise, this is all nonsense. Gas prices are continued to be elevated. I think there are more than 30 percent since the war began. It seems as though this is only going to continue. At least that's my sense, but maybe I'm being pessimistic.”

“It gets sold to a company called MP Materials, and then a Chinese one of the Chinese state companies buys a stake in MP Materials. And up until last year, MP Materials would send their rare earth ore to China to get refined and processed. But then last year, the Department of Defense took out a 15% stake in MP Materials as well, and it's looking to refine everything in The US now. So, yes, the Mountain Pass rare earths mine, now partly owned by a state backed Chinese company and the government of the United States of America. Shareholder meetings, gonna be fascinating.”

“The europium is what caused the red color in the colored televisions. And so for a period of time, every single colored television that was made in the world had europium from the Mountain Pass deposit used to make that red color.”

“The US Iran ceasefire expires tomorrow and tensions are mounting. Both countries' delegations are headed to Pakistan to engage in talks ahead of the deadline. President Trump said it's quote, highly unlikely that the ceasefire would be extended if a deal was not reached before Wednesday. He also said the US would continue to blockade the Strait of Hormuz until a deal is signed.”

“The administration has proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget for 2027, which makes me think, okay, this is all noise, this is all nonsense. Gas prices are continued to be elevated. I think there are more than 30 percent since the war began. It seems as though this is only going to continue. At least that's my sense, but maybe I'm being pessimistic.”

“Another way of saying that is we've lost the ability to contract over time. There is no NAFTA. There literally can't be a NAFTA. If I were to say, Ed, I'm going to marry you, which would be beautiful. But I just didn't come home on Tuesday, and then I came back a week later, and then I didn't come home on Thursday. And I didn't cook dinner for you on Friday. Are we married?”