‘I Want Security of Rare Earth’ – Trump Proposes to Trade Military Aid for Ukraine’s Metals

Speaking to reporters from his desk in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump announced his idea of sending more military aid to Ukraine in exchange for that country’s rare earth metals.

“We’re putting in hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said on Monday. “They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it.”

At the same time, Reuters reported that shipments of American weapons to Ukraine resumed this weekend after a roughly month-long hiatus. Reuters noted that it is unclear whether the Trump administration will officially acknowledge the pause that it had reportedly implemented.

At a campaign rally last year, Trump famously quipped that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was the world’s “greatest salesman” because “every time Zelensky comes to the United States he walks away with $100 billion.” A few months prior to that, US Congress had approved $61 billion in military assistance to Ukraine.

But the newly inaugurated president who regularly touts himself as a master negotiator, often pointing to his ghostwritten book, “The Art of the Deal”, has launched numerous initiatives in his first two weeks in office ostensibly to change the structure of many bilateral agreements.

He announced 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, for example, which went into effect on Saturday, saying they will strengthen his hand at the negotiating table with two of the US’ biggest trading partners. But after the stock market in New York on Monday reacted with a much-predicted downturn as a result, the Mexico portion, at least, was suspended for a month.

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The tariffs on Canada remained in place for much of the day on Monday, however, despite reciprocal measures announced by Ottawa. The news sent US auto manufacturing stocks tumbling by about five percent on Monday, as Canada provides much of Detroit’s materials and parts, and despite economists’ warnings that this kind of policy always results in higher inflation across the board.

After the market’s closing bell on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ultimately convinced Trump to suspend those tariffs, too, by at least a month.

While Trump did not elaborate on which “rare earth” he had in mind, Ukraine is a potential supplier of such mined elements as titanium, nickel, beryllium, manganese, gallium, uranium, zirconium, and, most notably, lithium, a critical component of batteries for smartphones, laptops and electric cars. Companies such as Tesla, owned by Trump’s unelected government-efficiency tsar Elon Musk (the nation’s richest man) have scoured the world for cheap access to atomic number 3 on the periodic table.

In early 2022, almost immediately after the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces captured a lithium deposit in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, and selected other territory to invade, in the Donetsk region especially, that is believed to contain lithium.

The town of Shevchenko, for example, was one such Russian target whose major strategic value was lithium production.

Last October, Zelensky outlined the strategic importance of Ukrainian deposits, saying that its natural resources, “including critical metals worth trillions of US dollars” should be protected.

AFP noted that he said he would urge Kyiv’s partners to secure a “special agreement on joint protection of critical resources available in Ukraine and joint investment and use of the corresponding economic potential.”