This Is How The US Can Become a Player in Rare Earth Metals

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:23)

Tracy, you know, we do these episodes on various areas of technology in which China is perceived to be ahead of the US. They're very interesting, and I learn a lot. It's not obvious to me, like, what lessons there are or anything.

Some of these things are like, we're really far behind. I don't think we're ever gonna catch up. This is very interesting and academic. But what exactly is the point of talking about all this? I don't know if there's anything to do with this information.

Tracy Alloway (0:49)

You know what I thought you were going to say is that we are sometimes accused of identifying strategic choke points or areas of difficulty on the podcast and then coming up with absolutely no solutions for how to fix them.

Joe Weisenthal (1:03)

I will be the first to admit I have no solutions. If someone accuses me of saying, you have not offered any solutions, you know what? I just say, that's not my job. I'm just a mere podcaster. I'm just asking questions.

Tracy Alloway (1:15)

We enunciate the problem and leave it to others to figure out.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

We leave the problem to others to figure out. But there are people who are doing more than identifying choke points. There are people who are identifying areas and vulnerabilities, etc. Some people actually are thinking about solutions, so they're not all pie in the sky. I've seen people on Twitter, it's like, oh, I know how to be more like Chinese. Why don't we just adopt-

Tracy Alloway (1:39)

How to be more? You've seen people on Twitter talking about how to be more Chinese.

Joe Weisenthal (1:42)

Yeah, they just say-

Tracy Alloway (1:43)

Is it Chinese Joe Weisenthal?

Joe Weisenthal (1:44)

No, they just say, why doesn't the US just adopt Marxist Leninism with Chinese characteristics? It's really that simple, and then we can do that.

Tracy Alloway (1:51)

On a serious note, the one you see most often is, well, why doesn't the US just ease up on some of its regulation like China in order to get things done quickly? That's the trope.

Joe Weisenthal (2:00)

Spend more money or something like that. Encourage actors to pursue things that aren't necessarily so short term, etc. Yes, there are, in theory, solutions. Anyway, let's have a conversation which we actually talk about ideas that may be similar in the realm of feasible.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

Excellent. I'm ready. And this is also, this is on an interesting topic that's come up a number of times on Odd Lots at this point.

Joe Weisenthal (2:23)

That's right. So we're going to be talking about a very core topic. And of course, this is the US vulnerability to strategic minerals, rare earths, etc., which we know that China dominates, which in theory of China were to completely shut off access, you know, military, high tech, etc., all kinds of problems. What could actually be done to alleviate this vulnerability?

Tracy Alloway (2:42)

And China's dominance was also a crucial turning point in the trade negotiations with the US. And also, I think you get a sense of, I don't want to say desperation on the US side, but like maybe urgency on the US side just by looking at the headlines that seem to come out on a nearly daily basis about like, oh, we found a huge critical mineral deposit in Utah. So, you know, we're all saved.

Joe Weisenthal (3:06)

It's also worth noting, before we go further, this is an area in which there's probably a decent amount of overlap from the last administration to this one. We did an episode a little while ago with Peter Harrell, who talked about some of these deals that the administration is making with equity stakes and private companies. I think Vulcan came up as one of them. And so, yes, we're going to be talking about where further we can go in terms of actually having a healthy, robust, domestic environment for our own strategic commodities, et cetera. Anyway, we really do have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Heidi Crebo-Rediker. She's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a former chief economist at the State Department, and she is the co-author of a brand new report for the CFR, looking at exactly this question, what can the US do in this realm? So Heidi, thank you so much for coming on the Odd Lots Podcast.

Heidi Crebo-Rediker (3:56)

Thanks for having me on.