US Lands A Deal For Rare Earth Minerals…But Not From China

Remember how China is flexing its muscle on rare earth minerals (the secret sauce needed to make every piece of high tech, from your phone to a fighter jet)? And remember how that might end up costing the entire world more on everything? Well, good news, there's another rare earth player jumping into the mix, and it's going to be a major assist! Welcome to the party, Australia!

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Here are Five Fast Facts on a new rare earth minerals deal:

1. 🤝 Joining Forces - A new deal was just inked between the US and Australia, valued at a whopping $8.5 billion. The Aussies are a friendly nation -- and bada$$ miners with lots of rare earth materials -- so it's a terrific partnership.

2. 🤜 Fight The Bully - The deal is needed because China has been threatening to use "rare earth extortion," which is a fancy term for controlling the tech supply chain by only giving the world enough to make very slow calculators.

3. 👀 Market Manipulation - In the past, China has also strategically dumped huge amounts of supply into the market in order to drive the prices down, putting non-Chinese companies out of business. 

4. 💨 Moving Fast - The US and Australia are not messing around, either: they plan to invest over $3 billion in joint mining projects within just six months to get this operation running at warp speed.

5. 🏃 Catch Up - Despite the huge investment, China has a 40-year head start on the rare earth game, meaning the world will be playing catch-up for years, if not decades.

🔥Bottom line: So, the new Australian-American mining partnership is official! It's great that this huge deal is with a friend, but it's even more about securing the ingredients for the future...and making sure no single country can hold the rest of the world hostage by controlling the supply chain. While President Trump joked that the minerals would be so abundant they'd "be worth $2," the real value is in telling the rest of the world that we're going to dig our own. Now, the entire global high tech economy is watching to see if this new friendship can dig fast enough to make up for 40 years of lost time.

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