🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E207 (2024-12-13) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 1:18:12 SUPPORT

“But as it turns out, it is impossible for any company that is not a Chinese company to be able to manufacture these magnets in an economically viable way... So what do you do, Jason? If you can observe that and realize that we want supply chain diversity, what the tariff does is it starts to push back on those kinds of activities because it doesn't allow it to continue to work.”

Jason commodities: 4 resolved, unproven · E207 (2024-12-13) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 1:20:25 SUPPORT

“It's because of environmental regulations. It's the same thing with Starship going up. We got a lot of regulations in this country. I understand people want to do the right thing, but we also have a lot of debt. If we could start mining Rare Earths metals here and maybe loosen the regulations.”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E213 (2025-01-31) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 1:33:22 SUPPORT

“Robots need actuators. Do you know what you need for an actuator or a permanent magnet? You know what you need for a permanent magnet? Rare Earths. Who's the rare earth king? X China. Greenland.”

Naval Ravikant (guest ×0.5) no commodities track record · E215 (2025-02-15) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 1:11:50 SUPPORT

“But when it comes to tariffs and when it comes to trade, we act like network effects don't exist. The classic Ricardian comparative advantage dogma says that, you should produce what you're best at, I produce what I'm best at and we trade. ... So you have to understand that certain industries have hysteresis, or they have network effects, or they have economies of scale. And these are all the interesting ones. These are all the high-margin businesses. So in those, if somebody is subsidizing or they're raising tariffs against you to protect your industries and let them develop, you do have to do something. You can't just completely back down.”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E217 (2025-03-01) · sentiment · strength 1 ▶ 18:48 SUPPORT

“You need a lot of rare earths to make robots.”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E218 (2025-03-08) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 19:52 SUPPORT

“Here's where tariffs make a lot of sense. If you have markets where there are domestic alternatives and or where things are fundamentally commodity, there's no reason why tariffs can't work to create the incentives to re-domicile economic productivity inside of the United States. That's a slam dunk, I think.”

Joe Lonsdale (regular guest ×1.0) commodities: 1 resolved, unproven · E218 (2025-03-08) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 20:29 SUPPORT

“In China and Indonesia and all these other countries, they are just shitting over the environment as they make things. I think tariffs are very reasonable in that case. It's not fair to make it more expensive for us because we're doing it well, and then we outsource it for them to destroy things.”

Friedberg commodities w=0.75 · n=8 · E218 (2025-03-08) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 13:58 SUPPORT

“I buy LED lights in my greenhouse, and the price of the LED lights just went up by 25 percent. This week, I actually spoke with the CEO of an LED company, and I was like, why don't you guys make the LEDs here? And there starts to become a crossover point where it actually makes economic sense for the company to make the LEDs here instead of sourcing them from Asia. And there's 100,000 examples of this.”

Friedberg commodities w=0.75 · n=8 · E222 (2025-04-05) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 1:02:38 OPPOSE

“We lost manufacturing because we weren't competitive in manufacturing. Putting a tariff on other manufacturing countries does not make Americans more competitive. It basically gives American businesses a crutch.”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E223 (2025-04-11) · positioning · strength 3 ▶ 1:42:06 SUPPORT

“As I told you, in 2020, on the back end of COVID, I started a business to build battery, cathode, active material in the United States. That's the business we need so that when you want to electrify, everything you want to electrify, there are batteries that we can make that's not reliant on the Chinese supply chain.”

Larry Summers (guest ×0.5) no commodities track record · E223 (2025-04-11) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 41:11 SUPPORT

“Rare earths, you want to have a strategic petroleum reserve for any rare earth. You want to do more mining in the areas that Chamath says we should in the United States, or in friendly countries. I am all for that.”

Sacks commodities: 4 resolved, unproven · E225 (2025-04-26) · explicit_prediction · strength 3 ▶ 11:33 SUPPORT

“They have identified strategically certain industries that are choke points in the global supply chain, and they have taken them over. And the best example of this is rare earths. ... And they're responsible today for over 90% of the processing of rare earths. ... Well, by the way, this issue still has not been resolved. China has now cut off the United States. And so as part of this trade negotiation, we're going to have to resolve that issue.”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E225 (2025-04-26) · positioning · strength 3 ▶ 32:46 SUPPORT

“I have a large rare earth mine in India. Yeah, it's one of the largest supplies of rare earths outside the United States. We negotiated that deal with the PMO, and they gave us a great deal to compete with the Chinese. Our specialty chemicals processing is on the ground there, and then the idea is then to import all of that specialty chemical into the United States”

Chamath commodities w=0.80 · n=10 · E226 (2025-05-02) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 54:09 SUPPORT

“Aaron mentioned this and I've mentioned this before, but I think that there are four things that really matter, batteries, AI, Pharma API, and Rare Earths. That now is on the agenda.”

Sacks commodities: 4 resolved, unproven · E226 (2025-05-02) · explicit_prediction · strength 2 ▶ 59:18 SUPPORT POLICY-ADJACENT

“China over the last 25 years has been able to strategically annihilate our rare earth processing capability and our ability to cast rare earth magnets. We just sat back and watched as the market basically went to the lowest bidder, which was being subsidized by the Chinese government, which the WTO allowed them to do. And now we have a critical dependency in our supply chain on China for basically every electric motor in every product, including cars.”

Sacks commodities: 4 resolved, unproven · E231 (2025-06-13) · sentiment · strength 2 ▶ 55:11 SUPPORT POLICY-ADJACENT

“And so we've ended up becoming dependent on them for all sorts of goods that we now realize are highly strategic and we're trying to figure out, well, how do we onshore these things? Because it seems really dangerous now for us to be single-threaded on, you know, on potentially adversarial power for rare earths or, you know, rare earth magnets and chips and pharmaceuticals and all these things.”