MP Materials Corp.

Sacks support ×1 ▲ on 🛢️ US state-backed critical-minerals champions win E247 · 2025-10-17 ▶ 24:48

The price floors... are designed to create enough certainty for US investors that they can reinvest in rare earths and reshore the processing and the casting of rare earth magnets... you have to address that if you want to alleviate the American dependency on this critical resource.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🛢️ US state-backed critical-minerals champions win E247 · 2025-10-17 ▶ 27:04

MP has a deal with General Motors, one of my businesses that makes LFP cathode, same deal with GM... the US balance sheet is the only one that can create a strategic reserve around these inputs... I'm a big fan of this general market structure. It's the only way that you can not be theoretical and actually respond to the conditions on the ground... The real future markets that really matter is in robotics, because these permanent magnets are the key input to the actuation mechanism of the robots.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ US state-backed critical-minerals champions win E241 · 2025-08-29 ▶ 38:38

I can talk to you about rare earths as one very specific example through my involvement with MP and now with Intellis. The Chinese have an extremely sophisticated market-driven approach... they'll price shape, they'll price dump... that locks the capital markets. [The US equity-stake answer:] we did exactly what China did with a couple of tweaks... the US taxpayer gets some of the upside. That is awesome... more of them is what I would say.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E231 · 2025-06-13 ▶ 55:11

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.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E228 · 2025-05-17 ▶ 1:03:47

their business model, Bergam stated business model in the interview I did with him is land leases and royalties. Enter into private partnerships and then participate in the value creation.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E228 · 2025-05-17 ▶ 1:17:11

there is no way to quickly raise several trillion dollars without selling land and without giving land leases and without taking royalties for drilling.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E226 · 2025-05-02 ▶ 1:00:23

The thing that the Chinese did that was so brilliant, which we still don't have an answer for, is they have these national champions. And being a national champion allows you, and we'll talk about this in AI, it allows you to blur the lines between the public and private partnership. It allows you to blur the law. It allows you to blur capital. And I'm not saying we have to do that. But what I am saying is we need to have our own answer to it.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E226 · 2025-05-02 ▶ 59:18

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.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E226 · 2025-05-02 ▶ 54:09

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.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E225 · 2025-04-26 ▶ 32:46

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

Sacks support ×3 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E225 · 2025-04-26 ▶ 11:33

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.

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.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E223 · 2025-04-11 ▶ 1:42:06

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.

Friedberg oppose ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E222 · 2025-04-05 ▶ 1:02:38

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.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 38:53

One of the things Lutnick said in the interview, which you didn't see in this clip, is that the government can actually accept for free contracts, these gratis contracts, and you don't need to go get approval to do it. So they can operate in the executive branch.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E220 · 2025-03-22 ▶ 35:28

Could you imagine if some of this 20 percent time was allocated to rebuilding the core infrastructure of America and giving back to the country that gives you the ability to have a multi-trillion dollar company?

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E218 · 2025-03-08 ▶ 13:58

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.

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.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E218 · 2025-03-08 ▶ 19:52

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.

Chamath support ×1 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E217 · 2025-03-01 ▶ 18:48

You need a lot of rare earths to make robots.

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.

Friedberg oppose ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E214 · 2025-02-07 ▶ 58:51

I think one of the things the government sucks at is capitalism. So I wouldn't make capitalism the mandate of a sovereign wealth fund, certainly not when we have $40 trillion of federal debt. It doesn't make economic sense.

I think it, for a different reason, is that we don't have an industrial policy in America. Many of our strategic competitors around the world, in particular China, have a long-term industrial policy, and they put enormous amounts of capital behind the industrial policy. A sovereign wealth fund, I think, would be a stealthy way to create industrial policy in America.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 🏛️ Washington starts taking equity and royalties in exchange for permits and grants E214 · 2025-02-07 ▶ 54:03

They should deploy that capital, so as you sell down the TikTok shares, maybe as you sell federal lands and you generate more oil revenue, take it all and invest it on behalf of America into American companies. I think that's a great, incredible idea.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E213 · 2025-01-31 ▶ 1:33:22

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.