Greenland’s reserves of rare earths, gold and diamonds are the reason behind Donald Trump's interest in annexing the island. Photograph: Carsten Snejbjerg/Bloomberg
It’s quite surreal to see the Trump administration invoking international co-operation to address a genuine problem in a not obviously irrational way. Yet looking at its plan for a coalition of countries to create a reliable supply of critical minerals independent of China, here we are.
Insulating the global economy from the geopolitics of minerals would be exceedingly useful. China last year demonstrated how controlling the supply of heavy rare earths could be weaponised to threaten manufacturing supply chains in the US and Europe.
But a combination of traditional Washington dysfunction plus Trump’s deep unreliability means the US is poorly placed to lead this initiative.
Already we can see how mispl
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