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For years, the United States has required more and more rare earth minerals to sustain our various industries and technologies. Unfortunately, we’ve relied on communist China for many of these minerals and their products for years.
The good news is Texas might have a solution in the form of a massive rare earth minerals deposit in the Round Rock area. That deposit is being praised as an opportunity to significantly cut our reliance on China.
According to Texas General Land Office Commissioner Dr. Dawn Buckingham, this is a major win. “It’s important for our national security,” she explained. “Your cellphone has over 20 rare earth minerals, and jets require tons of these minerals to fly, so it’s really important across the board.”
On top of being a major national security victory, Dr. Buckingham also believes harvesting these minerals will be a major economic win for the state. “We think that this deposit is gonna be worth billions and billions of dollars,” she said. “There are 17 rare earth minerals; we have 15 of them. The ‘heavies’ are the ones that are the most rare—those are the ones we’re richest in. That’s why this deposit is so incredibly important.”
And the icing on the cake here is that efforts are already underway to begin extracting and processing these materials. Buckingham says the Trump administration has already invested over a billion dollars in doing just that, and she predicts that within two years we’ll be delivering these minerals.