Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - August 14th, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:32)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend Podcast. Carol is on assignment this week.
It was a busy week where geopolitical tensions certainly remained front and center. This is the standoff between the US and Iran just continued to rattle global shipping in the oil market. Meanwhile, the latest readings on CPI and PPI suggest that the impact of the energy price shock from the Iran war continued to fade in July, possibly giving the Fed more room to weigh inflation pressures as they meet in Jackson Hole just a little later this month. As always, check out the latest updates and coverage on the Bloomberg Terminal and at bloomberg.com. This weekend, we're bringing you a special deep dive into the world of rare earths and critical minerals. It's a race that's been sparked recently by the White House's new multi-billion dollar push to wean the US off supply chains that have been dominated by China. We do that with a great rotation of guests, including a full hour with Joe Doe. He's Bloomberg News Senior Economic Statecraft Reporter who specializes in minerals and mining. Plus, we're joined by Gary Evans, the President and CEO of US Antimony, who mentioned to us that he would be open to selling up to 20% of his company to the US government. All that to come, we begin with the global landscape of the rare earths market one year after China's export restrictions on heavy rare earths and permanent magnets triggered rapid disruptions across the US, Canadian and European defense and industrial supply chains. So we wanted to touch base with an expert on these materials and why they're continuing to play such a pivotal role. For that, we not only tapped into the expertise of Joe Doe, but we were joined by Gracelyn Baskarin, Director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Also joining us this hour, Christina Kino, Managing Editor of the Markets Live Blog on the Bloomberg Terminal. We're talking to both of you and our other guests today because Joe, as you reminded us, it's been about a year since the US kicked off that critical mineral statecraft agenda. There was that unprecedented $400 million equity investment in MP materials. I can't believe it's been a year since then.
Here we are a year later.
Is the US any closer to weaning itself off of relying on foreign partners or adversaries for critical minerals and rare earths?

**Joe Doe** (2:45)
Well, I spent a lot of time writing about this. One person I like to often ask this question to happens to be our current guest.

**Gracelyn Baskarin** (2:53)
Oh, perfect.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:54)
Is that why you brought Gracelyn Basker into us?

**Joe Doe** (2:57)
I'm hoping she might have some answers for us.

**Gracelyn Baskarin** (2:59)
All right.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:59)
She's director of Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Gracelyn, you join us from all over the world and we're grateful for your time this afternoon and every afternoon that you do join us. Is the US any closer to no longer relying on partners and adversaries for rare earths and critical minerals?

**Gracelyn Baskarin** (3:17)
First of all, thank you so much for having me and thank you for the phenomenal work Joe does. He is reliably also one of my sounding boards, so it's a mutually beneficial relationship. Now, when I think about this question, I mean, I think there's two things we need to split out. Are we moving closer? Yes, we're moving closer and the scale of the investment, the capabilities that are starting to come online. When China imposed restrictions in April 2025, we didn't have heavy rare earth separation capabilities outside. But slowly, Malaysia came online.
But one of the things we have to remember is that we're still have a very long ramp to self-sufficiency. As you know, recently the G7 put forth the goal of 60 percent, not being more than 60 percent reliant on a single country outside of the G7.
That's a pretty ambitious target. Japan's been working on that goal for 16 years and they are now approaching that 60 percent mark. So we're getting closer, but we still have a long road to go.

**Joe Doe** (4:14)
You know, Graceland, we're 12 months removed since the USA Rare Earth, excuse me, USA Rare Earth, getting them all mixed up, MP Materials announcement, which really brought a shock, I think, to the market, right, to investors, to companies, to suddenly realize not only was this being talked about, but the government was there to make happen what you were just describing. I'm wondering with the president's summit, do we feel like making some comments that he did is more kind of reminding people that the government's there, or do we feel like he was sending some other type of message?