President Donald Trump's administration has launched a $12 billion Project Vault strategic stockpile of critical minerals such as rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite. All of these critical minerals are essential to the US defense, weapons, energy, electric cars, and advanced manufacturing industries but are heavily dependent on supplies from China.
Through Project Vault, the US wants to ensure that domestic production will not be disrupted if supplies are cut off, as happened last year. China blocked the export of rare earth elements such as gallium, germanium, antimony, and graphite in November, saying they have secondary military uses such as nuclear reactors and missiles. This is in retaliation for the US blocking the sale of advanced AI chips to China for the same reason.
Although Project Vault has been announced, the amount of critical minerals it plans to collect has not yet been announced. The collection will be done in stages to avoid a sudden increase in market prices.
Project Vault is only a temporary measure until critical mineral mining in the US is back up and running and able to meet domestic needs. Rare earth mining was stopped in the United States decades ago due to pollution and toxic waste issues as we can see for ourselves in Pahang.
