Public sentiment regarding the US-Australia Rare Earths Agreement is overwhelmingly negative, characterized by skepticism about its effectiveness and a strong distrust of political leaders. Many Australians feel betrayed by their government and express concern over the country's reliance on China for processing rare earths while doubting the agreement’s benefit to ordinary citizens. Environmental implications and the perceived futility of the deal are also significant concerns.

Australian Government

US Government

China

A lot of companies are really going to get benefits from this. But American companies with rights to Australian mining and Australian companies that have interests on US soil are probably going to see significant volatility to the upside. I have a few on my radar, but I really like Resolution Minerals (ASX:RML, OTC:RLMLF) and I believe they are going to be a huge recipient of funds because of their Horse Heaven project. They own the adjacent land to the Stibnite Gold Project backed by Perpetua Resources a Canadian giant, which was recently keyed in as a critical area for the only current Antimony mine in the states and fast tracked for approval. They are also trying to get NASDAQ listing sometime in the next quarter. Two significant catalysts for the near future.

PuzzleheadedWhole970

I am wondering about projects already running such as Donald project in Australia, where UUUU will be getting monazite for HREE extraction.

It is awaiting FID and I am wondering if we could see price floors for Dy and Tb from this agreement incorporated in FID. 

UUUU didnt get much spotlight from US gov despite being the most commercial production ready after MP and only one with HREE… I was wondering if its time might come now with all these events going on and the timeline.

JoLagoni

The biggest deal is with Alcoa. I bought AA Jan calls as soon as the Aussie PM blurted it out during the press conference.

Ok-Breadfruit791

LeoTora

Just entered EVR which mines antimony but their projects are based in Nevada and Mexico. They just acquired a plant to process antimony since they have Antimony reserves and are doing more drilling.

Damn cheap too! People probably think they're lithium due to their name 😔

i9Hosting

25 years to build rare earth mining infrastructure

Johanjohn7890

Arafura resources is a 50 bagger from here

makybo91

No_Dig7851

Lynas is the world's **second-largest producer of separated rare earth materials** and the only significant producer of separated rare earths outside of China. It is a strategically important company in the global supply chain, especially as Western countries seek to reduce reliance on China for these critical minerals.

[https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/](https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/)

cbusoh66

Great day today for rare earths. I'm only down 15% from Monday now (was down 30% as of Friday).

tonufan

It’s to compete with China which also has deals like these with Australia.

SnooOpinions1643

&gt; Australia will receive tranche of Apache helicopters in a separate $2.6 billion deal

This was arranged a year ago under a different president:

https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-12/Auditor-General_Report_2024-25_20_PDSS_14.pdf

&gt;Australia will invest $2 billion in U.S. companies for its Joint Air Battle Management System

So was this

https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/news/lockheed-martin-australia-signs-500m-air-6500-phase-1-contract

&gt;Australia agreed to purchase $1.2 billion of Anduril unmanned underwater vehicles

From wiki

Anduril Industries signed a contract with the Royal Australian Navy and the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) in **May 2022**

Art of the deal?  Art of the hot air more like it.

allthebaseareeee

Australia agrees to buy from our military defense contractors and the US taxpayer get to pay to build refinery’s in Australia?  Art of the deal

Serpentongue

Gydvinn

LAC, NB, ABAT and more rare earths are up 7% by post market 👌

Unable_Photo_5985

The plan is to produce so much rare earths that "you won't know what to do with them". Oversupply of any commodity drives prices down, destroys margins, and eventually leads to all but the lowest cost producers going out of business. As a strategic move it makes total sense to combat China's monopoly, but as an investment it's a terrible idea. The rare earth market is complex but most aren't undersupplied currently, there's just an artifical constraint that can be lifted at any time and will be when it has no political impact.

sunday_sassassin

China has forced other countries to permanently break it's stranglehold on rare earths.

shopchin

Anduril is another Peter Thiel concoction and is being favored by Trump administration just like Palantir. So tired of these people stuffing eachothers pockets.

reinkarnated

ChaseballBat

Wooden_Oil_3856

EnergyOwn6800

Rare earths aren’t just a play on minerals  
They’re a play on *control*

This isn’t about gallium or supply chains  
It’s about the West hedging against China’s grip on strategic inputs  
And Australia becoming the front yard for US tech-military integration

Watch for:

* Aussie mining stocks (especially juniors with US ties)
* US defense-tech contractors with rare earth dependencies
* Battery supply chain plays that benefit from non-China sourcing

This is geopolitical vertical integration disguised as “economic cooperation”

Thin_Rip8995

fridary

Whatever Trump signed, he won't respect. He'll get what he wants and give nothing in return.

Boomdidlidoo

Let's see the Australian side of the news.

fukijama

Sounds like Australia is giving the US an absurd amount of money, while they just get a building

AccelerationFinish

Oh yeah!! I love America. Honestly, it’s a disgrace that trump didn’t get the Nobel peace prize

ImaLawyerFL

Cool cool

Just need to go through 5 years of approvals, then 5 years of court appeals, so we should be able to start mining in 15 years

Wow_youre_tall

I work in the mining industry. 

Rare earths aren't that rare, even in commercial grades and quantities. The issue is that they are extremely resource-intensive to extract and process, and tend to have large quantities of hazardous byproducts which are expensive to deal with properly. 

The reason China supplies the world's rare earths isn't whether or not we have them in the ground, it's that China is prepared to cut massive corners on the environmental impacts and safety in order to produce the finished products much cheaper than can be done otherwise. 

It's great if we can sell rare earth rights and projects to the US, because the projects aren't feasible or aren't profitable in the Australia's current regulatory and social environment. It's money in the door in exchange for fairy dust and rainbows.

Alienturtle9

The entire rare earth market is expected to grow from around $4bn today to $8bn in 2032. That is hardly ‘huge investment potential’ and there’s a lot of hype in the sector imo.

Zealousideal_Rub6758

With this piece, John Coyne has outdone himself, so why do I still have lingering doubts?

What could possibly go wrong? Both Albo and Trump have nodded their approval; all that's left to do is to get on with the job.  Ah, but this is where it gets complicated.

The elephant in the room is Australian energy policy.  Over the last decade Australian heavy manufacturing (particularly East coast) has been decimated by energy cost increases. Energy-intensive companies like Qenus have ceased to exist, while others like Orica and Tomago are looking to relocate abroad or simply cease to exist. 

Against this energy backdrop, we have a strategic heads proposal to expand Rare Earth minerals processing.  This must be comedy-central. Engineers might joke about Aluminum being solid electricity, but that title really belongs to the Rare Eaths.  In particular Neodymium!

What makes us think we can economically extract Neodymium, if we can't economically refine Aluminum? Just asking...for a friend..

eesemi77

The government better make sure that all Australians profit from this deal and not just some fat billionaires mining company!

green-dog-gir

I'm just happy for whoever in the top echelons of the government will get millions into their pockets from this deal. Maybe us plebs will get a few crumbs like a $50 electricity rebate once a year or something.

Huge-Demand9548

What makes ppl think Aus can really refine rare earths efficiently? Pollution is the least of the concerns.

Refining very high grade rare earth requires crazy amount of electricity, Aus simply do not have the infrastructure or the power grid to do such a job efficiently. Aus can do it if ignoring all costs, it will just take 20 years to get the industry up to speed

FridayNightSodomy

What's the carbon emissions of extracting and refining these critical minerals?

Smooth_Staff_3831

Watch a whole bunch of environmental activist groups crawl out from the woodwork now to ensure that any proposal to process these here gets strangled in the cradle by green tape.


It's one of the major advantages China has over Western democracies - if they want to build a dam, other infrastructure or develop a strategic resource, some activist lawyer can't waste years of Government time and resources dragging it through the courts purely to delay it past the next election cycle.

AnonymousEngineer_

Only just recently, the US floated the rare earth pricing index to better reflect the supply and demand constraints. Previously there wasn't one because China overwhelming dominated the market and have been under cutting to make new investments around the world unfeasible. 

The Australian government will have to continue providing financial assistance in the short term, not just for extraction, but for processing which requires significant capital outlay.

Doxnoxten

I thought 8.5b wasn’t really that much and it’s more of a sweetheart deal to show that we are all still buddies and that the USA doesn’t need China.

mrsbriteside

Smittx

ouaisWhyNot

Newmount baby! Buy in this next dip because it's going to rise again to new heights.

Deep_Zucchini_9878

Frosty_Flatworm_2819

Can you imagine the royalties we’ll be getting out of this deal! Ca-Ching!

ReeceAUS

@vSanjo if you want to chat with me please do so on an open forum

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Next, the Aussies will get massive tariffs

IlVeroStronzo

RandomStrategy

Hope you got something good up front, Australia. Because you’re likely going to get screwed on the back end…

UpsyDowning

The problem with rare earths is not the deposits themselves but rather the refinement process which produces a lot of pollution.

Australia has massive RE deposits but they refine almost none of it onshore because of strict environmental laws. They ship most of their ore to Malaysia for refinement, which is something Malaysian environmentalists are not happy about.

China has no such compunctions. They have torn apart entire mountains and forests to both mine and refine RE. Any opposition to this environmental devastation is.. handled internally.

FireTempest

As long as we don’t get americas shithouse beef

newyylad

We should stop calling them 'rare earths'.  They are not so rare.

Maybe 'putrid minerals'?

You really don't want to be refining putrid minerals at home.  Very toxic.

holyoak

This is great and all, but China still controls like 90% of the world's rare earth processing and refining capacity.

CipherWeaver

davidkali

I hate Trump, but actually like the idea of sourcing these materials from Australia.
Sure every country has problems, but I’d rather be buying stuff from Australia.
If he only did this in a constructive way rather than completely messing things up by punishing and reacting to everything on a whims notice.
I also kinda like that he went after H-1B visa even though it’s clearly hamfisted and will hurt small companies while bigger ones find workarounds.
I get tones of info here to hate on Trump, but sometimes you gotta check yourself to make sure you’re actually against the actions rather than just the administration.
Not claiming in any way that I’m informed enough to even suggest this is a net benefit for our country, just that we need blind anger out of politics even when MAGA is just swimming in it.

Calm-Fun4572

China's refinement capacity and know how will take years for the West to catch up. US should just back down on the trade war for now.

Hikarilo

China thinks in dynasties not years. Everyone is trying to play catchup while China keeps moving exponentially forward. In the time it will take to set up parallel processing plants and be profitable to bypass China, the technology will have evolved - and much at China’s behest.

samdave69

Canada: “Hello!? You know I’m literally a day’s drive north but no, instead you wanna buy the stuff from 10,000 miles away?”

ClubSoda

Should have done it before starting the trade war. …

donturnaway

Rare earths are not rare, they are just difficult and expensive to refine. 

Everywhere has rare earths. China has the refining. 

There is no way western nations are going to put those extreme dirty plants anywhere within their own borders.

captsmokeywork

this is definitely not chinas brightest move. same way tariff wouldve pushed ppl away from US. this is pushing ppl away from china and making countries like US, Aus, and Japan who already been thinking of this for awhile go through with finding other rare earths sources or refine their own so theyre less dependent on china.

Optimal-Skin-6154

I could give a fuck about any deals he makes. It’s all a distraction from the war he is waging on us.

a_rabid_buffalo

Love Australia but dumb move dealing with that guy

AwarenessPresent8139

Huh wonder why he went with a country that has a fraction of rare earths compared to canada 🤔🧐💀

Money-Act-5480

Shouldn’t they be negotiating with Rupert Murdoch?

imaginary_num6er

Just set up a rare earths ore processing facility on the Hanford Nuclear Area. The Columbia River can provide plenty of water, security is already in place, and it just may be the best location to contain thorium and uranium polution.

Of course an act of Congress may be necessary.

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Watch them make the same mistake they did with natural gas, and tax this all on profits we never see rather than revenue or exports. Another mining boom, another missed opportunity.

[deleted]

Tell the US they can have some rare earths for every submarine they actually deliver

Pewpewgilist

Given Labor's track record on resources exports this is promising. Iron ore had kept us afloat for 30 years thanks to Keating while the LNP gave away gas for pennies.

Veledris

We need an independent negotiator. That prioritises Australia's interest. Not a politician. Who is just lining up his next job after he is voted out of parliament.  
Politicians have no qualification to negotiate any business deal. All previous politicians have fu&amp;$ed Australia over. 

ie: John Howard negotiating the worst deal in history with impex. Japanese gas thieves!!

rogerrambo075

Whatever deal is made, I do not trust that the US will fulfill it's end of it completely and/or in a timely fashion.

PerverseRedhead

That's ok - this is something good for a change.

bundy554

If history is any guide, we'll basically give it away at cost with no value-adding done on-shore, just like Hastie proposed.  
  
We have leverage and opportunity here; let's make the most of it.

SheridanVsLennier

I'm sure they do, they've started a trade war with all of the rate Earth suppliers above us on the list. 

Question is what do we stand to gain? For the right price, sure why not. But we should be looking at the mistakes we've made with our energy exports, and dinner a deal that positions us to gain long term.

MissyMurders

If us gets these for free or close to free every pollie or person involved is a traitor.


This is a great opportunity for investment and actually something for the country.

recurecur

Can't wait for our politicians to give it away for basically free and have us pay for clean up.

Iliv4gamez

The amount of leverage we have here is quite good. They're concerned that they rely on China to process Australian rare earth minerals, maybe the US can invest in Australian processing on shore?

patslogcabindigest

The United States and Australia have signed a strategic agreement to decrease China's dominance in the supply of rare earths and critical minerals.

US-Australia Rare Earths Agreement

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

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What the people want