Trump taunts the EU: the US controls Greenland’s rare earths

Brussels – In the end, the United States is taking over Greenland. Not the territory itself, but what lies beneath the ground: rare earths, the set of elements essential for the green, digital, and technological transitions, and the defence sector. Critical Metals, a US-listed company, has control over the Tanbreez deposit, which contains 4.7 billion tonnes of rare earths, a quarter of which (27 percent) are “heavy,” meaning they are essential for the defence sector. 

The company itself proudly announces that “our operations in Greenland enable us to exploit one of the world’s richest and still largely unexplored rare-earth deposits”, with all the strategic implications that entails: “These essential materials power crucial sectors, from clean energy and electric mobility to defence, aerospace, robotics, and advanced technologies, enabling the creation of high-tech facilities, accelerating innovation and driving the global energy transition.” 

For the European Union, the economic agreement is a severe blow, because the rare-earth deposits the EU needs to implement its agendas – the Green Deal, the Defence White Paper, and the Competitiveness Strategy – have been snatched from under its nose. US President Donald Trump threatened to take over the island by force, distracting the Europeans, who instead were preparing a defensive line in the Arctic. Finance quietly did the rest, and now, the Old Continent finds itself squeezed between dependence on China  and the new American market.

 https://www.eunews.it/2023/01/20/green-deal-sfida-ue-stati-uniti/

The US gains strength, while the EU is lagging behind

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark. It has its own legislative and judicial powers, and natural resources are managed by the local government. Denmark remains responsible for foreign policy, defence, and financial oversight. As natural resources are managed by the authorities in Nuuk, it is within the Greenlandic government’s “It is within the prerogatives of the Greenlandic government to decide how to use them, but Europe has certainly missed the chance to keep a real treasure for itself.

Critical Metals claims that the Tanbreez deposit contains a “significant” proportion of the global supply of critical minerals, the extraction of which is dominated by China globally: Yttrium (45 percent), terbium (45 percent), dysprosium (62 percent), gadolinium (35 percent), lutetium (80 percent) and samarium (19 percent). The same deposit is also known for its high concentrations of zirconium (Zr), niobium (Nb), tantalum (Ta), hafnium (Hf) and gallium (Ga). In addition, the Greenlandic deposit “accounts for the majority of the global supply of metallic zirconium, which is essential for hypersonic weapons and relatively easy to extract from this type of ore.” 

The United States is succeeding in reducing its dependence on China, while the European Union is now weakened and caught between two suppliers who are competitors, neither of whom is a truly reliable partner anymore. The race for innovation is leaving Europe increasingly behind, because the loss of control over Greenland’s rare‑earth resources amounts to the tombstone of the strategic autonomy so cherished in Brussels and in other European capitals. 

https://www.eunews.it/2023/04/12/autonomia-strategica-ue-macron-cina-usa/ 

The underlying problem is that, at least when it comes to raw materials and rare earths, Trump has a clear vision and strategy: to grab as much as possible to curb China’s economic influence. In this race, the EU has done little and is finding it increasingly difficult to carve out a role and place for itself, remaining on the sidelines of the future fast approaching. Yet Washington had already made its strategy clear to Ukraine: aid in exchange for rare earths in Ukraine’s subsoil, with the EU, even in that case, standing idly by. 

If there is one thing Trump is succeeding at – and brilliantly, at that – it is weakening the European Union. He has done so by forcing it to sign a trade deal that wipes out its ambitions for a twin green and digital transition and the revitalisation of European defence, with Europeans bowing to pressure and accepting the terms willingly rather than risk triggering trade wars. Now, control over Greenland’s critical raw materials may well be the final blow to Europe’s ambitions, although Europe has certainly played a significant part in bringing this situation upon itself. European transitions were geopolitical bets, which the EU has already lost.