Trump: US Will Be Awash With Rare Earths Under Aussie Deal

President Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical-minerals deal at the White House on Monday as the US eyes the continent's rich rare-earth resources when China is imposing tougher rules on exporting its own critical minerals abroad. The two leaders described the agreement as an $8.5 billion deal between the allies, the AP reports. Trump said it had been negotiated over several months.

• "In about a year from now we'll have so much critical mineral and rare earth that you won't know what to do with them," Trump said. "They'll be worth $2." Albanese added that the agreement takes the US-Australia relationship "to the next level."

• Under the deal, both countries will contribute billions of dollars to projects in the next six months, including initiatives in Australia, joint ventures between the US and Australia, and joint ventures that will also involve Japan, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.
• This month, Beijing announced that it will require foreign companies to get approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even trace amounts of rare earth materials that originated from China or were produced with Chinese technology. The Trump administration says this gives China broad power over the global economy by controlling the tech supply chain.
• "Australia is really, really going to be helpful in the effort to take the global economy and make it less risky, less exposed to the kind of rare earth extortion that we're seeing from the Chinese," Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House's National Economic Council, told reporters on Monday morning ahead of Trump's meeting with Albanese.
• Hassett noted that Australia has one of the best mining economies in the world, while praising its refiners and its abundance of rare earth resources. Australia has dozens of critical minerals sought by the US.

• The agreement underscores how the US is using its global allies to counter China, especially as it weaponizes its traditional dominance in rare earth materials that are used in everything from jet engines and electric vehicles to laptops and phones, the AP reports. Top Trump officials have used the tactics from Beijing as a rallying cry for the US and its allies to work together to try to minimize China's influence.
• China is a command-and-control economy, and we and our allies will neither be commanded nor controlled," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last week. "They are a state economy and we are not going to let a group of bureaucrats in Beijing try to manage the global supply chains."
• The ABC reports that while it was "all smiles" between Trump and Albanese, things got testy between the president and Kevin Rudd, Australia's ambassador to the US. Asked about tweets criticizing Trump that Rudd, a former prime minister, deleted after Trumps' election win last year, the president told Rudd, "I don't like you either, and I probably never will." Australian officials tell the ABC that Rudd later apologized off-camera and Trump said, "All is forgiven."