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Trump Got Snookered on Ukraine Mineral Deal [1]

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Date: 2025-02-27

Peter Olandt has a diary up analyzing the mineral deal (steal) that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign: The US/Ukraine Bilateral Agreement (the mineral deal) is worthless! Which makes it brilliant. He argues that this is little more than “a deal to make a deal.” The Mangled Mussolini who claims to be the greatest dealmaker hasn’t read or can’t understand the text of the deal he thinks is so great.

But that’s not the only mistake Trump is making. Politico had a crack at the resources themselves: Donald Trump might have made a bad mineral deal with Ukraine:

Trump might end up getting less than he bargained for. Estimates of Ukraine’s supposed mineral wealth are based on outdated Soviet-era surveys that didn’t take into account the viability or cost of developing them. . . . Though the country reports more than 20,000 surveyed mineral deposits and sites, only around 8,000 of them have been assessed as viable. Of these, fewer than half were being exploited before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago. Estimates of the value of these deposits are largely based on Soviet-era surveys mostly carried out between the 1960s and the 1980s.

Politico points out that “rare earths” aren’t really all that rare, it’s just that the extraction process is difficult and expensive. The country with the greatest expertise and experience in doing so is . . .

China — which processes nearly 90 percent of rare earths worldwide — holds a “near monopoly” over this step in the supply chain, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Most major rare earth producers, including the U.S., lack the domestic know-how or infrastructure needed to refine the minerals, forcing them to rely on Beijing.

Also, look at the map above. A lot of the — presumed — mineral deposits are located in territory under Russian occupation.

Two of the largest known rare-earth prospects — the Azovske and Mazurivske deposits — are in the Russian-held Donetsk region. And the Novopoltavske site is in Zaporizhzhia, which is under Russian threat. Some promising lithium fields at varying stages of development — the Shevchenkivske field in the Donetsk region and the Kruta Balka block in the Zaporizhzhia region — are also on the front lines.

Trump is:

relying on old Soviet-era surveys (which, I suppose, a Soviet-era agent might be expected to do)

asking Ukraine for access to minerals that are under Russian control

having to rely on China to process them.

For the U.S. president, this could turn out to be the deal of the century — or could leave him with a bunch of loss-making mines no American company will ever want to invest in.

Long odds it will be the latter.

I don’t know for sure whether Peter is correct, that the terms of the deal itself will let Zelenskyy stall Trump’s effort to screw Ukraine over on Putin’s behalf. But whatever Zelenskyy does manage to get out of it, it looks to be a lot more than what Trump can do.

LOSER!

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Note: The US may have the potential to outdo China in rare earth processing, but right now it seems we don’t: The Battle to Break China’s Rare Earth Supply Chain Dominance (2023):

[China] controls about 85 percent of the global processing capacity for rare earth elements and produces around 90 percent of the world’s rare earth magnets.

The US is worried about this: Can the U.S. Break China’s Grip on Rare Earths? (Sept 2024)

The American government has increasingly viewed the development of a domestic rare earths supply chain as a matter of national security. It aims to break China’s near-total control over refining and production.

Or we used to be worried about it, back in the days when we had a government that cared about little things like national security.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/27/2306669/-Trump-Got-Snookered-on-Ukraine-Mineral-Deal?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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