What are rare earth elements, and why does Trump want them from Ukraine?

What are rare earths, and are they rare?

With names like dysprosium, neodymium and cerium, rare earths are a group of 17 heavy metals that are actually abundant in the Earth’s crust across the globe.

In a 2024 assessment, the United States Geological Survey estimated there were 110m tonnes of deposits worldwide, including 44 million in China – by far the world’s largest producer.

A further 22m tonnes are estimated in Brazil, 21m in Vietnam, while Russia has 10m and India seven million tonnes.

But mining the metals requires heavy chemical use that results in huge amounts of toxic waste and has caused several environmental disasters, making many countries wary of shouldering the considerable costs for production.

And they are often found in minute ore concentrations, meaning large amounts of rock must be processed to produce the refined product, often in powder form.

Why does Trump want them?

Each of the 17 rare earths are used in industry and can be found in a wide variety of everyday and hi-tech devices, from lightbulbs to guided missiles.

Europium is crucial for television screens, cerium is used for polishing glass and refining oil, lanthanum makes a car’s catalytic converters operate – the list in the modern economy is virtually endless.

And all have unique properties that are almost irreplaceable or can be substituted only at prohibitive costs.

Neodymium and dysprosium, for example, allow the fabrication of almost permanent, super-strong magnets that require little maintenance, making viable the placement of ocean wind turbines to generate electricity far from the coastline.

Trump said Monday he wanted to reach a deal in which Kyiv guaranteed supplies of rare earths in return for US aid, an idea floated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year.

Where does most of the world’s current supply of rare earths come from?

For decades, China has made the most of its rare earth reserves by investing massively in refining operations – often without the strict environmental oversight required in western countries.

China has also filed a huge number of patents on rare earth production, an obstacle to companies in other countries hoping to launch large-scale processing.

As a result, while rare earths reserves are plentiful elsewhere, many firms find it cheaper to ship their unprocessed ore to China for refining, further reinforcing the world’s reliance.

The US and EU get most of their supply from China, but both are trying to boost their own production and better recycle what they use to reduce dependence on Beijing.

At the height of a US-China trade dispute in 2019, Chinese state media suggested that rare earth exports to the United States could be cut in retaliation for American measures. Japan saw first-hand the pain of a cut-off in 2010, when China halted rare earth exports over a territorial conflict.

Since then, Tokyo has pushed hard to diversify supplies, signing deals with the Australian group Lynas for production from Malaysia.

How do they differ from ‘critical minerals’?

Rare earths are among the elements designated as critical minerals in the US, but not the whole list.

Among the measures announced by Beijing in response to US tariffs on Chinese goods coming into effect is export controls on certain critical minerals, though none of them are rare earths.