VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF

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.

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 🛢️ 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.

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.

Friedberg support ×1 ▲ on 🏛️ Arctic shipping-lane control is the real Greenland play E210 · 2025-01-11 ▶ 1:39:14

It's not the literal statement that matters as much as kind of the vector and the magnitude of the vector. He's clearly trying to begin negotiating for some change. I don't know what the ultimate kind of strategic endpoint is meant to be here, but clearly there's something I think Chamath might have a good read on this and seems to make a lot of sense.

It's very strategic. If you look at the Panama Canal, I believe either end is operated and controlled by China. We are at war with China, whether we like to admit it or not, in my opinion. This is very strategic.

Chamath support ×2 ▲ on 🏛️ Arctic shipping-lane control is the real Greenland play E210 · 2025-01-11 ▶ 1:35:19

Because of climate change and other things, the Arctic ice shelf is melting. And the more and more it melts, it opens up a shipping lane in the northern passage for a lot of critical goods. And so if you had some sort of strategic agreement with Canada and Greenland, you effectively have this monopoly control over something that could become as important as the Panama Canal. And so I think if you look across the world, the control of maritime shipping lanes becomes this really critical strategic military and economic asset.

Jason support ×2 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E207 · 2024-12-13 ▶ 1:20:25

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 support ×3 ▲ on 🛢️ Targeted tariffs act as a reverse subsidy that makes US critical-minerals supply chains investable E207 · 2024-12-13 ▶ 1:18:12

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.