From Legal Insurrection

Meanwhile, Ford struggles with supply of rare earth magnets as geologists question if there are truly significant mineral deposits under the Arctic island.

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

The last time I wrote about Greenland, the nation had elected independent-minded leaders to the top spots in its political system.

This was then followed by Vice President Vance’s trip with his wife to the Pituffik Space Base on the Arctic island to support the trips.

During an address during the visit, Vance unleashed some hard-hitting statements directed at our ally Denmark. Essentially, Vance took a diplomatic sledgehammer to Denmark’s treatment of Greenland, suggesting that Copenhagen has treated the island more like a neglected outpost than a strategic priority.

Vance did not sugar-coat his opinion of the obliviousness Denmark has had to the threats Russia and China pose in this region.

Given the recent spate of international conflicts (India vs Pakistan, Israel pummeling Iran), Greenland seems to have dropped out of the news. However, it has not been completely forgotten about by President Donald Trump.

The Trump administration is considering financing a $120 million rare earths mining project in the Arctic island nation through a loan from the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) to Critical Metals Corp, in what would be the administration’s first overseas investment in a mining venture. The project, known as the Tanbreez rare earths mine, is aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on China, which currently dominates the global rare earths market.

Critical Metals Corp (CRML.O) has received a letter of interest from the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) for a loan worth up to $120 million to fund the company’s Tanbreez rare earths mine in Greenland, in what would be the Trump administration’s first overseas investment in a mining project.

The loan, if approved, would boost U.S. access to minerals increasingly at the center of global economic trade and help offset the country’s reliance on market leader China….

…In a letter dated June 12 and reviewed by Reuters, New York-based Critical Metals has met initial requirements to apply for the $120 million EXIM loan and, if approved, would have a 15-year repayment term, longer than the company likely would have with private financing.
The project would have to be “well-capitalized with sufficient equity from strategic investors” to receive the loan, the letter said.

EXIM, which acts as the U.S. government’s export credit agency, said in the letter that Critical Metals qualifies for a loan program designed to support companies that compete with China.

Diversifying from China is becoming an urgent matter. For example, Ford Motor Co. reports that it is struggling with supplies of rare earth magnet because of China tightening the level of exports.

Automakers, especially those focused on EVs, are among the largest industrial consumers of rare earth materials.

China granted temporary export licenses to rare-earth suppliers of the top three U.S. automakers, including Ford, earlier this month, according to a Reuters report.

But Farley told Bloomberg News the company continues to struggle.

“It’s day to day,” Farley said. “We have had to shut down factories. It’s hand-to-mouth right now.”

Will Greenland be the answer? Maybe…and maybe not.

Several prominent geologists are skeptical about the widely touted prospects of Greenland’s rare earth reserves, arguing that the narrative of a “mineral bonanza” is exaggerated and that significant challenges remain before these resources can be meaningfully developed.

Minik Rosing, a Greenlandic geologist and professor at the University of Copenhagen, is among the most vocal critics of claims that Greenland holds vast, easily accessible rare earth riches. Rosing emphasizes that while rare earth elements are present in Greenland, they are not uniquely abundant or concentrated compared to other parts of the world. He points out that rare earths are neither rare nor earths in the traditional sense—they are a group of metals found in many rock types globally, and large known deposits exist elsewhere.

Rosing, a native Greenlander and professor at the University of Copenhagen, is credited with making life on Earth no less than 300 million years older by discovering a carbon signature in Greenlandic rock formations. He has spent years studying the territory’s terrain. He argues that the assumptions about getting rich quickly from untapped resources in Greenland are akin to planning to get wealthy by playing the lottery. The widespread lack of detailed knowledge about geology, mining, and minerals has resulted in, he says, an almost “mythological misunderstanding” of what rare earth elements truly are.

“In geology, we say what characterizes rare earths is that they are neither rare nor earth. They are a group of metals that are commonly occurring in many rock types, and there are large known deposits of them throughout the world,” Rosing explained to 60 Minutes.

According to Rosing, nothing points to a special concentration of minerals and rare earths in Greenland, and there are many places in the world where minerals are easier and cheaper to obtain, such as the USA.

In the U.S. Geological Survey’s overview of known rare earth reserves from 2024, Greenland sits eighth in the table, ranked just behind the US but far behind countries such as China, Vietnam, and Brazil.

Whether or not there are large deposits, this move could be an important phase in showing the Greenlanders that the U.S. is serious about in investing in the region for our security and theirs.

From CFACT

By David Wojick

The infamously glorious Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is scouring the federal government and finding many billions of dollars’ worth of stuff to cut. Their total claimed savings to date are $180 billion, with just under $30 billion of that in regulatory costs.

See here.

Looking at their big ticket list, I see they have missed a potentially huge source of regulatory costs. The likely reason is because it is a truly obscure critter, but I helped build it, so here it is.

It is called the Federal Information Collection Budget (ICB). Sounds like nothing, but it is the estimated sum total of all the information-related work that American people do because of federal regulations. Keeping records and doing your taxes, for example. This is not about filling out forms; it is about all information activities required by a federal regulation.

This work is called regulatory “burden,” and it sure is that. It is estimated by every federal agency, for every regulation they have or propose, in two forms — hours and dollars. Few people know the federal government actually tracks in a general way all this free work people are required to do for them.

The tracking is done by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which I helped set up back in 1980 under the new Paperwork Reduction Act. Each regulatory requirement gets a separate OMB control number, which is printed on every form.

The estimated numbers are huge, but they are also ridiculously low to the point of fraud. First, here are the official estimates, which are certainly big enough for DOGE to take a whack at.

Government-Wide Totals for Active Information Collections

ACTIVE OMB CONTROL NOS.

10,704 – call it 11,000 for a round number

TOTAL ANNUAL RESPONSES

136,143,659,968 – call it 136 billion

TOTAL ANNUAL HOURS

11,529,625,471 – call it 11.5 billion

TOTAL ANNUAL COST

$203,090,046,782 – call it $200 billion

So 11,000 regulatory requirements require 136 billion responses a year, taking 11.5 billion hours and costing 200 billion dollars. Surely some of this is wasting the American people’s valuable time, so DOGE should look into it.

Given a reported annual cost of over $200 billion, DOGE ought to easily match their $30 billion in regulatory cost savings to date. That is just a 15% cut.

But the numbers are really much bigger; in fact, these official numbers are ridiculously small. Taking 11.5 billion hours to do 136 billion responses gives an average response time of 0.085 hours, or just 5 minutes.

In the 11,000 cases, there might be one or two that only take 5 minutes, although I cannot imagine one. We are not talking about simply filling out a form. This is about everything involved in dealing with the form (or record keeping) over time.

The cases I am familiar with typically take hours; some take days. For example, for the business meal’s deduction, you have to make and keep a detailed record of each meal, which over a year can add up to a lot of time.

Let’s say the average response work is just half an hour, or five times the OIRA figure. That already puts the annual cost over a trillion dollars. If the average is an hour, then two trillion dollars. These are enormous numbers, which are not being revealed.

Note too that if the cost is just the hours of work, then the average wage is $17.39 an hour. The national average wage is reportedly $36.24, or roughly double what the agencies are using. If the cost includes capital costs, then the agency wage rate is even smaller.

I do not know how much DOGE looks into cooking the books to hide regulatory costs, but that is clearly what is going on here. The agency burden estimates are preposterously low, hiding the huge burden cost of their regulations.

These fraudulent agency estimates of regulatory burden on the American people are government-wide, so Congress should be looking hard at them.