美国关键矿产投资深度探讨：稀土供应链与人才短缺

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She's in for Carol Massar. I'm Tim Novak on this Tuesday afternoon. It's the 11th of August 2026. Just to remind everybody how the markets closed today. The S&P 500 fell 3/10 of 1%, the Nasdaq Composite down 6/10 of 1%. The Dow fell 3/10 of 1%. As I promised, we're doing something special in the 4:00 hour. And here we are. Jojo is Bloomberg News senior economic statecraft reporter. He is here with us for the next hour.

We're talking everything when it comes to rare earths and critical minerals, a crucial part of the supply chain for everything from electronics to weapons systems. Joe, we've wanted to do this for so long, and we're glad you can do it. I'm. I have to say, we're happy to have you. Christine Carroll is so sad she's out today, but Joe is making it up to her. Because next week when I'm out, I guess Joe is stepping in a little bit.

So he's going to be here. We got my Joe. Okay. So Joe, I want to start with you. Then we're going to bring in, uh, this, this fantastic lineup that we have for the next hour. And it's a lot of it is all of it is thanks to you and the people you've brought us over the last few years. So we are grateful to you for that. I just want to start, Joe, with a general question about critical minerals and rare earths, because when I met you, you were metals and mining.

Reporter. Yeah. And we talk to you sometimes about heavy equipment and then something. Something happened. Something changed. What was it? And why did rare earths and critical minerals become this conversation that investors, the administration and were so focused on? I mean, if we really go way back, right, the pandemic hits in 2020, if we in case we forgot and supply chains became a story like actual supply chains and like, you know, those of us who are in the commodity space, it covered actual supply chains, you know, understanding the procurement officers at various big companies you've heard of, right?

Uh, soda companies, beer companies, car companies. Um, and then if we just move from there, it becomes very apparent to investors in a big way why supply chains matter. Fast forward to a couple of years later. Three years later, China in the middle of the summer of 2023, uh, shocks a lot of close watchers by saying they're putting export controls on gallium and germanium. And these are two elements that are absolutely essential to defense technologies.

Right. Defense. Right. Like it's not a it's not a Silicon Valley thing. It's not Apple and Google all. It's it is very much these are defense applications. And we had some reporting shortly after that time. We did a big take that said, when those export controls were announced, it sent off alarm bells throughout the Biden administration. And we had a senior administration official tell us for that story. That was the moment that all of the concerns that various agencies had had, in particular the Pentagon, and trying to warn, you know, big players in Congress, the president, United States, that it was there.

And that is where we are now. Right? So the Biden administration moves on. Trump administration comes back in. They had long had this conversation about the importance of rare earths and critical minerals. In some ways, it was Trump and Trump 1.0 that put this on the map. It got it got supercharged, right. Liberation day happens. The president of the United States puts tariffs on every imaginable country in the world.

And he goes hard on China. And China responds just a few days later. Initially nobody heard about it because it just happened in the middle of the night on a Thursday. And they said, we're putting export controls on rare earths, important rare earths, but also permanent magnets. And this is when it went from becoming a defense technology problem to an all out tech war. You bring up exactly what we're going to do right now perfectly, Joe, because you fast forward from then to today, and we're regularly hearing from the president about this meeting with executives from the mining and critical minerals industries, including on Friday when he had them down in Washington, D.C. check out what he had to say about the US versus China accredited mining programs in the United States now graduate less than 170 mining engineers each year, while China graduates more than 3000.

And half of our current mining workforce is set to retire within the next three years as well. That was President Trump on Friday. Joe, jump in here. Yeah, I mean, his wow at the end, right, is again, a conversation that you've been hearing in the world that I've been covering for a long time. I mean, I remember sitting in this office, call it, 3 or 4 years ago with the now former CEO of Rio Tinto. And, you know, we would catch up with them every so often.

And one of the things that he pointed out was, you know, Joe, one of the big problems we have is a lack of geologists and a lack of people who want to come in to the mining space. Rio Tinto is the second largest mining company in the world. Well, who were they losing that talent to? Um, oil and gas. So when you hear the president say last week, you know, uh, we're having an ageing workforce. Well, it's largely because the people who are capable of a lot of these jobs are not going into mining.

Um, and we've had some wonderful reporting out from our commodities team, uh, even this year about the dearth of labor. And, um, you know, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Well, somebody who is at least going into mining from a reporting perspective as polymath science reporter for Bloomberg News recently writing about how the president is rewriting corporate norms with this 211 mile Arctic road, the federal government granting a permit to build a road through the Alaskan wilderness.

In exchange, it gets part of a mining company. Paul, what is what is happening here with the road and sort of the economic statecraft part of this, which I think investors are becoming increasingly used to. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's funny to ask what is happening to the road will right now nothing, but soon potentially everything. Right. This could completely alter the way of life there, which is that people go bush plane by bush plane from village to village.

To build a road in this untouched wilderness would really strongly change the way of life there, but it would also really change the mining environment there. You're going from having extremely expensive expeditions to try to prospect in very costly helicopter rides, to being able to drive in and, you know, really see what's going on there, see what could be mined there. And also, once the mines are actually built in, say, about a decade to be able to just tough, you know, get everything on tractor trailers and freight it out.

That is a huge, huge difference. So right now we're at the very, very beginning stages of that. But allowing this road to potentially be built allows you to completely change the way that people live there, and the way that mining is able to make money in Alaska. Now, one of the things that stood out from your story is the fact that the due diligence by the government, in terms of carrying out the project was completed in less than 72 hours.

Uh, and that seems a little too short, right, for a project that, as you say, is going to completely change the way that people live around that area. What could have been potentially missed? Uh, given that rush to complete the due diligence? Yeah, I think one of the big questions is how successful is this mining district really going to be? R