00:00 Speaker A
The US and Ukraine have signed a critical minerals deal after months of negotiations. The agreement gives the US access to Kiev’s mineral resources in exchange for US investment fund in Ukraine. Here with the details. We’ve got Yahoo Finance senior markets reporter, Nes Ferre. Nes, what do we know on this?
00:22 Nes Ferre
Yeah, Brad. Well, the optics of this deal so very different than back in March. So, we had with this deal, Treasury Secretary, Scott Beasant, signing it along with Ukraine’s deputy minister, much different than back in March, early March when you had that meeting between President Zelensky of Ukraine, President Trump, and Vice President, J.D. Vance, that meeting which went sideways. Look, President Trump has long said that he wants the US to be reimbursed for the support that it has given Ukraine during the war. So, this deal will involve setting up what’s called a reconstruction investment fund. The Ukraine and the US would jointly manage and maintain the fund. And just to back up a minute, when we talk about critical minerals, there are more than 50 critical minerals out there that are used in modern technology. A subset of these minerals are what are called rare earth minerals. Think nickel, think lithium. These rare earth minerals are used in things like magnets that go into EVs, they go into electrical grids, they go into weaponry, and Ukraine has over 20 critical minerals. They have about 5% of the world’s deposit on critical for critical minerals. And why is this important for the US? Well, this circles back to China because China controls most of the critical mineral processing, most of the reserves. The US is almost 100%, very, very reliant on China when it comes to critical minerals, according to the sources that I’ve talked to. And China accounts for 60% of those global reserves. Beijing has been tightening its controls on exports of critical minerals to the US in retaliations for the for the tariffs policy that is going on right now. Uh the US produces some critical minerals. It produces aluminum, it produces zinc, magnesium, but others it definitely needs. What are some of the challenges when it comes to this? Well, look, uh Russia controls a large part of the eastern part of Ukraine, where you have a lot of deposits there. You’ve got a lot of coal coming out of there, also lithium. So, that would, if Russia keeps that, then that that would not be included, obviously in this deal. So, uh as far as the mines are concerned, it takes more than 15 years for these mines to be operating, to between the time that you identify it and the time that you pull it out of the ground. So, these are years and years and years of development when it comes to taking these deposits out of the ground.
05:33 Speaker A
Absolutely. Nes, thanks so much for taking the time, breaking this down for us here this morning.