Gallium: The battle for rare earths

THE US political machinery has become too big and inflexible. Its clumsy gait is fairly reflected in its policy choices.

Realistically, they have always been two. Threats and war. Diplomacy was never a choice more than it was a tactic. Used as a convenient platform to publish their intent, US diplomacy in multilateral institutions served no other discernible purpose than to gather everyone in one room. A megaphone for threats.

There never was any pretence that the US itself intended to be bound by multilateral decisions, nor oblige the prescripts determined by the institutions created for that purpose.

But they needed a sellable excuse to justify aggression. They call it democracy. It has helped dethrone many governments and assassinate many leaders. However, under President Donald J Trump, Elon Musk’s endearment for the President, the currency in vague terms is the aggravated threat of sanctions, or what the Donald refers to as tariffs.

President Donald J Trump did not invent tariffs nor their use as sanctions. As far back as 1890, President McKinley promulgated and codified tariffs into an Act.

Perhaps, the difference between DJT’s use of tariffs as sanctions and McKinley’s protectionism is that McKinley didn’t suffer from imagined foes riding out of Jeffery Epstein’s tomb, or hideout, as the case may be.

Oscillating between protectionism and sanctions, the instincts of the hegemon had settled into a routine. Post-Brettonwood, all the US had to do was to weaponise the dollar or its exorbitant privilege through a variety of mechanisms. They include sanctions, regime change, blackmail and proxy wars. And lately, tariffs, otherwise known as Trump’s tantrums.

No matter who occupies the Oval Office, it inevitably boils down to tactics. Or, as the world has become accustomed to, pre-war routines.

But the tariff madness is about to meet its Waterloo. In the Stockholm serenity of the Rosenbad, the Chinese delegation was confronted with the threat of an ultimatum. Stop buying Russian hydrocarbons or face the Lindsey Graham-sponsored secondary sanctions of up to 500%.  Vice Premier He Lifeng, reflecting on the significance of this threat, took his time to respond, and probably cleared his throat twice out of disbelief.

The Chinese Vice Premier, pondering and recalculating, knew what most people who had a cocktail level of familiarity with the matter knew, that it’s a tad more complicated than that. In a ‘how to say’ moment, he understood that threats or ultimatums are desperate calls of cornered animals. They have a distinct ghoulish howl, and their eyes are worryingly unfocused.

He Lifeng delivered his lines with care. Lindsey Graham or not, they will absorb the tariffs of whatever percentage and still continue to do trade with whomever they feel like.

In the words of Scot Bessent, the US Treasury Secretary, the Chinese could not contemplate betraying their sovereignty over a tariff threat or a tantrum. But at that critical moment of delivery, Bessent understood more of the things the Chinese did not say than their nuanced retort delivered in sonorous deliberation. And this is that the America First sloganeering does not mine gallium.

At the heart of the US persistence to hold these trade talks, first in Switzerland and later in Sweden, lies the United States’ desperate need to access rare earth minerals.

There could be an approximate number of minerals liberally classified as rare earths, seventeen by some count. Whether or not they are indeed rare is beside the point.  The emphasis is on either one of two things. These are that they are scarce and not mineable at a commercial scale on the one hand, and their difficulty of refining on the other hand.

So many countries have certified or certifiable reserves of these rare earths. Yet China dominates both categories of capacities, of reserves and refining.

The most interesting of these are gallium and germanium. The silent part of Lifeng’s response to the ultimatum threat was that it would take China longer to process aluminium ore, and whilst at it, there would be no gallium to sell. Without this element, listed as number 31 on the periodic table, there could be no manufacturing of weapons, drones, solar panels, semiconductors and magnets for guided missiles.

The other way of looking at the US threat is rather instructive. Whilst the US believes it holds all the military cards, it only occurs to the Chinese that all such cards are made in China.

In order to ensure the efficacy of all the published tariffs, the United States of America would have to dig deep from its well of punitive options. But there shall be no wholesale applicability of these hybridised tariffs and sanctions. Depending on the country, the importance of the commodities they deliver to the United States may render the immediacy and severity of the tariffs or sanctions inconsequential. In the Executive Order that levied 50% tariffs on imported Brazilian goods, the list of exempted goods renders the accompanying political threat empty and vacuous.

Established as a new reality, therefore, nothing will prevent President Donald J. Trump from scripting a long list of exemptions or carve-outs for Chinese goods from the harshness of the 100% to 500% secondary tariffs.

The many industrial and commercial constituencies that hold sway over Trump’s impulses will lobby for their inclusion in the list of exemptions just so they can deliver Chinese goods to the American people at a price that is not politically disruptive or economically inflationary. After all, these corporations are too big to fail, and the political eruption too explosive to contemplate.

Trump’s entire policy machinery is predicated on the desire to access and dominate sources of rare earth materials. The list of countries with certifiable rare earth minerals is curious. First is China. Second is Vietnam. Next is Brazil and Russia. Followed by India and then Australia. Greenland follows the USA. The pattern here is rather revealing. Even the rare earths mined at the Mountain Pass in California are refined and processed in China.

So, the Donald understands that to win this war, economic or military, he needs rare earths, from Greenland or Australia. It’s just disappointing to the US war machine that the majority of these rare earths are held by BRICS member countries and their partners. Raytheon, the US weapons manufacturer, sounded an even graver alarm. While de-risking from China over the long term is a possibility, decoupling is well nigh impossible.

And then there is Pakistan. It is said to be holding over USD 3 trillion worth of unspecified rare earth reserves. Immediately thereafter, Trump ditched India and sided with Pakistan. And so did Kenya announce its reserves of 7 trillion dollars’ worth of coltan, a strategic mineral for mobile telephony and computers. Both countries would be very strategic to watch in the complex rare earths Great Game.

It is amazing what these minerals can do and their overall effect on Trump’s geopolitics.

Rare on this earth!

* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.