Manufacturers are struggling with constrained supplies as U.S. and Chinese officials negotiate over export restrictions with consequences for global industry.
Page F3From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 22 September 2026
THE CLAIM
Trump signs Greenland security deal 17 days after a US firm quietly bought the island's rare-earth mine
As it ran on the front
The mine came first. Seventeen days — seventeen — before Tuesday's signing at the United Nations, a US-based company quietly inked a deal to buy a Greenland mining company that would produce more than a third of the world's rare earth magnet supply excluding China. Excluding China. Do note the exclusion.
Then the agreement: a larger US military presence, two Cold War-era bases to open, the prospect of an end to a standoff over a strategically located and mineral-rich island, after months of rhetoric about taking the island over. That is what Greenland and Denmark paid, and the purchase was ... antecedent to every line of it.…
…(cont) You will be told the arrangement is security. In 2010, Wen Jiabao denied that China was using its control of rare earths as a bargaining chip, in a dispute with Japan over an arrested fishing-boat captain. A denial addresses intention. Control is not an intention; it is a position. Manufacturers are struggling with constrained supplies as US and Chinese officials negotiate export restrictions.
A third of the magnets, excluding China. Two bases to open above them.
First the well, then the fence. The fence a man builds facing out.
“For sixteen years the horror story was Beijing squeezing the world on rare earths — Wen Jiabao stood up in 2010 and said it was not a bargaining chip — and now a US firm holds a Greenland mine good for a third of the magnet supply outside China, with two Cold War bases opening over it. That is not protection from the chokepoint, that is the chokepoint changing hands. Manufacturers are short on supply right now, and the people who set the price are the ones meeting about it.”
“Look, this is a security agreement, two allies signed it, Denmark and Greenland were at the table, nobody was leaned — did I say leaned? That doesn't sound like me. The mine purchase was a private commercial transaction that happened to close seventeen days earlier, and honestly, if we don't secure supply somebody else does, which is exactly what I was saying back when there was no mine for us to secure.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump is due to meet with leaders of Greenland and Denmark on Tuesday to sign a deal that will allow a larger US military presence on Greenland and could end a standoff over the strategically located and mineral-rich island.
President Trump’s new Greenland security deal comes just 17 days after a US-based company quietly inked a deal to buy a Greenland mining company that would produce more than a third of the world's rare earth magnet supply excluding China.
The deal comes after months of Trump's rhetoric about taking over the island.
· Premier Wen Jiabao of the People's Republic of China denies reports that China is using its control over minerals crucial to high technology (called "rare-earth") as a bargaining chip, especially in a from the morgue, 8 Oct 2010
· China sends friendly message on tariffs ahead of Trump-Xi meeting from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.