Sabre rattling to whip up support is as old as Yeee Harrrr. He’ll try do a deal.
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This ^.
When it comes to sourcing minerals, this again. Sure Greenland’s resources are significant, but in the case of rare earths the US actually has its own deposits down in the far south-west. What it doesn’t (or, at least, didn’t until recently) have is processing capacity. So bizarrely even if the US were to be digging ore out of its own territory it would have to ship it to China where the only separation/refining plants are https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/2/10/us-begins-forging-rare-earth-supply-chain ! They do seem to be doing something about that though.
When I last looked (10-15 years ago) the Chinese were playing a hard-ball economic game with US rare-earth production. They could easily undercut the Americans on price and would do so until the US mine went out of business. Then they’d raise the price until eventually it made business sense for the Americans to re-invest in their mine and re-open it. Once all the capital money was spent and production was beginning they’d drop the price again and starve it to death again. Rinse and repeat.
If Donald is looking for places with rare earths in the ground to invade then perhaps he could get his base behind invading number two on the ‘Reserves’ list after China ? Ironically that’s Vietnam. Maybe, like Dubya Bush in Iraq, he feels they should invade it again just to settle an old score ?
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Would make sense for the US to control the whole chain of refinery - Soz Earth, there’s money to be made.
Interesting that the US lacks RE processing capacity. One reason the UK is going down the shitter seems to be a lack of investment and especially re-investment in larger, productive businesses, the US seems to have a similar malaise. Now could be a good time to take advantage of China’s weakness - they’ve been doing as you describe across almost all areas of manufacturing for 20 years: smothering competition under a blanket of loss-leading overproduction, but now their population is starting to seek higher wages and better working conditions, and their manufacturers charging much higher prices to consumers, they seem to be struggling rather more…
If the US is fearful over its security then yes, it should indeed control the whole supply chain. But that’s where the conflict with making money appears. The business truth is that Chinese rare earths are much cheaper. So a real businessman (which Donald thinks he is) makes money by buying from the Chinese.
and talking of business, with Dump not even in office yet
On that note, Musk is trying to open a Lithium refiner in Texas, but is encountering some opposition due to the huge volume of water it requires, that will impact supply to the region.
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China is also quite vulnerable to global climate change (rising sea levels in the east, desertification in the west) so it’s having to balance the fossil-fuel power station program against this. There’s more than one reason that it’s a big believer in solar.
I haven’t any recent experience of how the workforce thing is going. When I visited in 2011 the urbanised educated ones were already itching to raise their standard of living. But for every one of them there were dozens of rural peasants sleeping, if they were lucky, on concrete floors in shacks with no glass in the windows. Just in terms of numbers there was no shortage of people.
There’s little enough water in the Rio Grande as it is. Since they don’t have a wall they’re still having to use their ditch as a deterrent to the northward flow of people and drugs. Ha ha.
And don’t forget the Rio Grande silvery minnow, poor little beggar.
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100% yes, Denmark was a founding member of NATO. If Trump decides to take Greenland he’d be informally declaring war against Europe.
He wants the minerals and rare earth metals, or more importantly he doesn’t want Europe having access to them.
This is absolutely being driven my Musk and the moment he has the inevitable falling out with the psycho twat it will go away.
Not just minerals,
With global warming the North West passage is far busier than it has ever been,
US also worried about increase in shipping near its borders
Also makes sense, tricky to make money and ‘your subjects’ better off. Donnie seems less interested in the latter.
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An alternative take. Every garbled syllable of this is deflection. It’s from the Ladybird book of tinpot strongmen and is being done because briefing feedback that the Trump Administration will now be receiving as the incoming government will almost certainly be showing that the half arsed selection of tariffs and other economic ‘policy’ being espoused in the election cycle will not make the people that voted for Trump any better off. It’s the cup and ball trick but the ball is Earth.
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I’ve seen another line of thinking, that Trump is still basically playing a business strategy where you go in with OTT demands, so that you can then allow a negociation down to the conditions you are actually aiming for, but you then have the power of the contrast between the silly demand and the actual demand making actual demand look more reasonable.
Part of the challenge is of course that the US is a country, and not a business, and so none of this is actually likely to work in reality.
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I’m assuming he didn’t create this particular strategy himself, and I think even the most intellectually challenged person could understand the concept. Where Trump’s stupidity comes out is trying to apply it to an area where it doesn’t work, and where just making the claims at this level are going to have serious repurcussions, even if you’ve not intention of following through with them.
Pacify the idiots at home who want to believe that MAGA is real, whilst keeping other countries off balance by having to respond to increasingly silly posturing. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing happens and nothing is done - see Mexican Wall etc.
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Trump has more hot air than Dyson but The Heritage Foundation are fundamentally banking on him pushing some of their 25 flavors of shit through.
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Reading around and it seems a lot of Americans are convinced that Biden is bad, they are worse off now than 4 uears ago, and things wil be better under Trump.
Lots of extremely selective statistics to back this up.
Or perhaps many of these posts truly are bots.
Or perhaps thick as shit believers of lies wrapped up in religious fundamentalism and rose tinted nationalism get the Government they deserve.
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