ChinaTalk MP Materials, Intel, and Sovereign Wealth Funds
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Sep 16, 2025 
Daleep Singh, former Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics, Arnab Datta from Employ America, and Peter Harrell, former Biden official, dive into the intricacies of rare earth materials. They discuss America’s broken critical mineral market and its reliance on China. The guests analyze MP Materials’ role in revitalizing U.S. production, potential challenges, and the importance of a sovereign wealth fund. They also critique government strategies, especially regarding Intel and the Chips Act, emphasizing the need for effective industrial policy and transparency.
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Why Critical Mineral Markets Fail
- Critical minerals markets are broken due to concentrated market power, extreme price volatility, and missing market infrastructure.
- These failures produce chronic underinvestment and geopolitical vulnerability that market actors avoid.
China Built The Market Plumbing
- China intentionally built market infrastructure like exchanges and benchmark contracts to dominate pricing and liquidity.
- That infrastructure shift crowded out Western liquidity and enabled Chinese control of price discovery.
U.S. Once Dominated Rare Earths
- The U.S. historically produced rare earths through the 20th century but lost competitive ground in the 1990s and 2000s to China.
- April's trade-war-era export cutoffs made dependency an acute near-term risk, not a distant hypothetic.