Is Greenland the Key to Washington’s Critical Minerals Shortfall?

There are not many policy areas where you find continuity from the previous administration into the current administration, but the priority focus on deepening access to critical minerals is one of them.

In early February, President Donald Trump announced Project Vault—a first-of-its-kind public-private strategic reserve for critical minerals, backed by a $10 billion loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and nearly $2 billion in private capital. Modeled on the logic of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Project Vault is designed to shield American manufacturers from the kind of supply shock Beijing demonstrated it could inflict during last year’s rare earth export restrictions.

That instinct is right. The question is whether the infrastructure behind it will match the ambition.

From a national security perspective, Project Vault deserves robust support. Consider the four rare earth elements that most Americans have never heard of. Neodymium and praseodymium are combined to form the extraordinarily powerful permanent magnets that drive the electric motors inside every F-35 fighter, every drone swarm, and every hypersonic guidance system currently in development. Terbium and dysprosium are then added to those magnets to keep them functional at extreme temperatures—the kind generated inside a jet engine or a missile seeker head.