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| Greenland's foreboding environment (Policy Options) |
Donald Trump 's recent actions in Venezuela indicate his plans to "run" the country are driven by a desire to generate wealth and power for himself and his financial backers in the U.S. oil industry (as former Trump ally Lev Parnas recently outlined in his Substack newsletter). A similar situation appears to be unfolding in Greenland.
Other U.S. Presidents have looked longingly toward Greenland, but Trump's lust seems particularly intense and perhaps misguided, especially in light of his bullying tactics in Venezuela, which raise questions about his true motivations toward Greenland. Trump says his interest in taking over the territory is driven by national-security concerns, but the icy island -- the world's largest island and part of the Kingdom of Denmark -- is known to have vast natural resources, including oil, gas, and rare-earth minerals, the kind considered vital for defense and green technology. The global rare-earth elements market is growing in tandem with the green energy boom and is expected to be worth more than €6.5 billion this year. That news, despite his lack of interest in green energy, is likely to make Trump see dollar signs.
A new report from Associated Press (AP), however, suggests Greenland's rare-earth minerals might not be worth the trouble and expense of extracting them, much less the costs of taking over the territory. In other words, Trump's designs on Greenland might be driven by his well-established predilection for cluelessness. Josh Funk and Suman Naishadham report for AP under the headline "Greenland's harsh environment and lack of infrastructure have prevented rare earth mining":
Greenland’s harsh environment, lack of key infrastructure and difficult geology have so far prevented anyone from building a mine to extract the sought-after rare earth elements that many high-tech products require. Even if President Donald Trump prevails in his effort to take control of the Arctic island, those challenges won’t go away.
Trump has prioritized breaking China’s stranglehold on the global supply of rare earths ever since the world’s number two economy sharply restricted who could buy them after the United States imposed widespread tariffs last spring. The Trump administration has invested hundreds of millions of dollars and even taken stakes in several companies. Now the president is again pitching the idea that wresting control of Greenland away from Denmark could solve the problem.
The AP report strongly suggests Trump's interest in Greenland has little, if anything, to do with national security. Funk and Naishadham write:
Trump eyes Greenland's critical materials
Critical raw materials are metals and minerals important for high-tech products and the green economy. Greenland has significant deposits but most of the territory is encased in ice and unexplored.
But Greenland might not be able to produce rare earths for years — if ever. Some companies are trying anyway, but their efforts to unearth some of the 1.5 million tons of rare earths encased in rock in Greenland generally haven’t advanced beyond the exploratory stage. Trump’s fascination with the island nation may be more about countering Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic than securing any of the hard-to-pronounce elements like neodymium and terbium that are used to produce the high-powered magnets needed in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robots and fighter jets among other products.
We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday.
That is the kind of brain-dead malarkey that should make Americans cringe. It suggests Trump has not even begun to think through a complex issue -- and that is much the same potentially disastrous approach he has taken to Venezuela. "We are going to 'do something' on Greenland"? Like what? Trump gives the impression he has no idea. From the AP report:
“The fixation on Greenland has always been more about geopolitical posturing — a military-strategic interest and stock-promotion narrative — than a realistic supply solution for the tech sector,” said Tracy Hughes, founder and executive director of the Critical Minerals Institute. “The hype far outstrips the hard science and economics behind these critical minerals.”
Trump confirmed those geopolitical concerns at the White House Friday.
“We don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next door neighbor. That’s not going to happen,” Trump said.
No matter what Trump wants, the challenges of mining in Greenland are daunting, and the expense is substantial. On top of that, Greenland, Denmark and Europe have made it clear they oppose Trump's designs on the territory, which includes threats to take it by force. From AP:
A difficult place to build a mine
The main challenge to mine in Greenland is, “of course, the remoteness. Even in the south where it’s populated, there are few roads and no railways, so any mining venture would have to create these accessibilities,” says Diogo Rosa, an economic geology researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. Power would also have to be generated locally, and expert manpower would have to be brought in.
Another concern is the prospect of mining rare earths in the fragile Arctic environment just as Greenland tries to build a thriving tourism industry, said Patrick Schröder, a senior fellow in the Environment and Society program at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
“Toxic chemicals are needed to separate the minerals out from the rock, so that can be highly polluting and further downstream as well, the processing,” Shröder said. Plus, rare earths are often found alongside radioactive uranium.
Is U.S. intervention likely to release radioactivity into Greenland's environment? Are we going to turn the island into an oversized Chernobyl? How many Trumpian screw-ups are the U.S. and the world going to tolerate before someone finally forces him out of office?
Trump has proven that he does not possess the patience or the intellectual curiosity to confront challenging issues. Consider his response to the coronavirus. When an unknown virus appeared in China, U.S. intelligence issued warnings in more than a dozen classified briefings. But Trump ignored the warnings, lied to the public about the threat, allowing the COVID pandemic to take hold.
Seeking rare-earth minerals poses a laundry list of details that Trump has proven he is not equipped to handle. From AP:
Besides the unforgiving climate that encases much of Greenland under layers of ice and freezes the northern fjords for much of the year, the rare earths found there tend to be encased in a complex type of rock called eudialyte, and no one has ever developed a profitable process to extract rare earths from that type of rock. Elsewhere, these elements are normally found in different rock formations called carbonatites, and there are proven methods to work with that.
“If we’re in a race for resources — for critical minerals — then we should be focusing on the resources that are most easily able to get to market,” said David Abraham, a rare earths expert who has followed the industry for decades and wrote the book The Elements of Power.
This week, Critical Metals’ stock price more than doubled after it said it plans to build a pilot plant in Greenland this year. But that company and more than a dozen others exploring deposits on the island remain far away from actually building a mine and would still need to raise at least hundreds of millions of dollars.
Turning a profit in rare-earth minerals is difficult, according to AP, and it seems likely Trump has given that little or not consideration:
Producing rare earths is a tough business
Even the most promising projects can struggle to turn a profit, particularly when China resorts to dumping extra materials onto the market to depress prices and drive competitors out of business as it has done many times in the past. And currently most critical minerals have to be processed in China.
The U.S. is scrambling to expand the supply of rare earths outside of China during the one-year reprieve from even tougher restrictions that Trump said Xi Jinping agreed to in October. A number of companies around the world are already producing rare earths or magnets and can deliver more quickly than anything in Greenland, which Trump has threatened to seize with military power if Denmark doesn’t agree to sell it.
“Everybody’s just been running to get to this endpoint. And if you go to Greenland, it’s like you’re going back to the beginning,” said Ian Lange, an economics professor who focuses on rare earths at the Colorado School of Mines.
A number of more promising mining paths exists outside Greenland, but those options might not satisfy Trump's thirst for bullying:
Focusing on more promising projects elsewhere
Many in the industry, too, say America should focus on helping proven companies instead of trying to build new rare earth mines in Greenland, Ukraine, Africa or elsewhere. A number of other mining projects in the U.S. and friendly nations like Australia are farther along and in much more accessible locations.
The U.S. government has invested directly in the company that runs the only rare earths mine in the U.S., MP Materials, and a lithium miner and a company that recycles batteries and other products with rare earths.
Scott Dunn, CEO of Noveon Magnetics, said those investments should do more to reduce China’s leverage, but it’s hard to change the math quickly when more than 90% of the world’s rare earths come from China.
“There are very few folks that can rely on a track record for delivering anything in each of these instances, and that obviously should be where we start, and especially in my view if you’re the U.S. government,” said Dunn, whose company is already producing more than 2,000 metric tons of magnets each year at a plant in Texas from elements it gets outside of China.
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