Why Are Rare Earth Metals So Important?

Now, you mentioned this particular interest has been placed on rare earths in recent months. Why are these materials or metals receiving so much attention?

They're very important across the economy. They're used in, and I know we've discussed this in the past, wind turbines, EVs, but they're also used in fighter jets and missile guidance systems, all across a technology spectrum. If you think about your cell phone, the thing that makes it vibrate is rare earths and the magnets that are in there.

This is of particular concern where Western countries are concerned because if you go back to the early 1990s, the US was actually the leading producer of rare earths. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, what we saw was a very concerted effort by China to take ownership not only of rare earths but other aspects of critical materials and really internalize that supply chain.

So now we're in a situation where a lot of that knowledge, industry knowledge, and the processing knowledge and technology has been lost. We're starting to build that back, and that's really been a focus of, I'd say, the last 12 or 18 months that we've seen now, particularly as the geopolitical tensions have risen. China's really used rare earth as an important step in their negotiation tactics.