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Americas|The Mine Is American. The Minerals Are China’s.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/world/americas/brazil-mine-rare-earths-china.html
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A Brazilian rare earths mine backed by American investors illustrates China’s grip over the strategic minerals that underpin the modern economy.
April 16, 2025Updated 4:44 p.m. ET
The gaping pit alongside a tiny town in rural Brazil has all the elements to solve the West’s sudden problem of finding critical rare earth metals — vital for building electric vehicles, wind turbines, guided missiles and robots.
Opened last year and backed by American investors, it is the only mine outside of Asia producing significant quantities of some of the hardest-to-find rare earths.
With China controlling most rare earths and now withholding the strategic metals amid an intensifying trade war, the U.S. government last month quietly disclosed that it wants to finance the Brazil mine’s expansion.
But there is one hitch. The mine is already contracted to sell its rare earths to China.
“They were the only customer who could process the product and separate the product,” said Thras Moraitis, chief executive of the company behind the mine, Serra Verde. “Prescient planning by the Chinese over many, many decades has put them in a position where they have very strong control.”
The Brazil mine lays bare that, when it comes to the minerals vital for tomorrow’s economy and battlefields, the West is way behind and has few good options to catch up.
China dominates the mining and processing of rare earths, a collection of 17 elements that are essential to the auto, semiconductor, aerospace and defense industries. While abundant in the Earth’s crust, they are difficult to extract and separate, and the United States and other Western nations have largely left the work to China.
