Loading ...New ticker from June, MP. Dipping now but probably a good rare earth bet.
Parts:
Recently there have been stirrings of interest in repatriating rare earth production to the United States. The U.S. military has become acutely aware of its dependence on China, Therefore, it is the government’s responsibility to set the stage for increased American rare earth production.
Reducing red tape and bureaucratic inertia. there is no reason that permitting a mine in the United States should take five times longer than it does in Canada or Australia. (there were reasons until we crashed in 2008, and everything had to change)
In 1952, Mountain Pass opened. First explored as a uranium deposit, it soon supplied rare earths for the electronic needs of the Cold War economy. Until the 1990s, it stood alone as the only major source of rare earths worldwide.
By 2002, however, the mine was defunct. In the eyes of the U.S. government and major manufacturers, it no longer made sense to acquire rare earths from a U.S. source subject to stringent environmental regulations. (During Trump this reversed)
Instead, the hard business of extracting useful minerals was exported to other countries, where environmental damage was safely out of sight. China happily obliged, allowing environmental harm to proliferate so long as the costs of rare earth mining were kept down.
As the company’s fortunes dwindled, its new CEO oversaw much of Molycorp’s most profitable assets being transferred to Chinese-linked Neo Materials, where he formerly served as CEO. Molycorp’s final remaining husk declared bankruptcy in 2014.
MP chart: https://schrts.co/hMzTADPK