By dint of hearing about rare earths, we end up believing that these are precious treasures that would almost justify a third world war.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
In fact, rare earths are not rare at all. There are everywhere and there would be even on Mount Royal, according to the geologist Michel Jébrak, of the University of Quebec in Montreal.
Most countries have them. The more a country has a large area, the greater its potential to receive rare earths. Canada is considered one of the major rare land reserves worldwide, such as the United States, by the way.
When we talk about rare earths, we speak of a group of 17 elements that have strange names and have been used in industry for decades. Until recently, these elements, which are called dysprosium, erbium or yttrium, did not interest so many people.
Their relatively low price does not justify the necessary investment to extract them profitably and the extraction and refining processes of rare earth elements are extremely damaging to the environment.
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In a recent analysis, the economist Angelo Katsoras, of the National Bank, takes up the analogy of the cookie to describe the rare earths. Metals like gold, for example, are extracted like chocolate chips that are removed from a cookie, while rare elements of earth are the grains of sugar from the cookie, difficult to isolate and extract sufficient concentration.
Once extracted, rare earth elements must still be sorted and refined, which implies a long and expensive process. If China now controls this market, it is because of generalized disinterest, but it is also because it is an extremely polluting mining activity of which many countries would not want them. This is the reason why we are talking about rarity.
The demand for rare earth elements increases. It is linked to the strong growth of high -tech products, from electric vehicles to wind turbines, through armaments and smartphones.
China’s advance in the extraction and refining of rare earth elements is today overwhelming, which gives it a considerable advantage in the current trade war with the United States.
Between 2020 and 2023, the United States imported China 93 % of its yttrium needs, which is part of the manufacture of lasers, radar systems and screens. Since then, trade tensions between the two countries have increased and China has reduced its exports to several rare earth elements and restricted the export of magnet manufacturing technologies that contain them.
The United States would like to free itself from this dependence, which is understandable. This intention seems to serve as a pretext for the expansionist aim of the Trump administration towards Canada or Greenland. However, there would be advantage of starting by extracting and producing rare elements of land on American territory where there are still unexploited reserves.
Last week, the Trump administration took an option on rare earth resources and minerals deemed critical of Ukraine, an agreement that has a more political than economic meaning.
Rare earths may not be rare, but they are more useful politically than ever, for China as for the United States.
