In the Trump world occasionally a pattern develops. At this point we have seen our president negotiating with Vladimir Putin over the sharing of the mineral wealth of Ukraine. His threats to use tomahawk missiles and impose sanctions on Russia have obviously failed to sway Putin into a negotiated settlement whereby Putin is willing to share the mineral wealth of Ukraine. Now we see why the Denmark/Greenland discussion occurred some months back. Greenland has vast amounts of rare earth minerals located near its shoreline and readily accessible to US mining operations. And of all places Trump has now picked on Nigeria as his next target. If you research Nigeria you will find that they also contain vast amounts of rare earth minerals. Contrast those resources against the ever deepening abyss between the US and China. China in addition to containing the majority of the planet’s rare earth minerals also processes nearly 50% of all rare earth minerals. It appears that president Trump is concerned that China has the stronger hand because of their rare earth cache and limit his negotiating power with China. China has been the target for extensive tariffs in the past. And they have retaliated against the United States with their own tariffs. The real issue here is being able to access rare earth minerals for various weaponry and non defense, non military products that will be part of the 21st century and growing in prominence as time moves forward. So the real pressure here is for Trump to find alternate sources of rare earth minerals. But he may insist that he’s trying to bolster American manufacturing. That is a “red herring”. His real intent is to provide a “work around” China to maintain whatever supplies of rare earth minerals we need going forward. The pattern is established. His advisors have told him that rare earth minerals need to be a high priority. There is no limit to how far Trump will go including the intimidation of third world countries to access their supply of rare earth minerals. Instead of negotiating he has decided to threaten. This is the new Trump foreign policy and the world needs to recognize his methods so that peaceful negotiation can be accomplished without the threat of violence. When peaceful discussion is replaced with violent attacks, bombing, etc. we have lost the diplomatic war and reduced cooperation with coercion. This has never been the American way and it’s costing us all our traditional foreign friends.
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