In Belo Horizonte, the halls of Exposibram, Brazil's largest annual mining conference, filled with executives, geological maps and mine models on Monday, August 24, when Mining and Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira took the stage to recount what he had heard in Washington. It was no small claim: according to Silveira, Donald Trump and his team themselves admitted that "the United States lost the critical minerals race to China", a line the minister repeated as though holding a bargaining chip.
Silveira said he spent an hour at the White House during President Lula's trip to Washington in May, a meeting in which American officials reportedly cited electrification, mineral separation and the defense industry as areas where the United States is racing to catch up with China's dominance. The speech, reported by Folha de S.Paulo, argued for attracting foreign capital to process ore on Brazilian soil, not merely to extract it.
The minister's central argument was blunt: producing rare earths in the United States costs more than doing it in Brazil, leaving Washington little choice but to work with Brasilia. On China, Silveira said he believes Beijing likely has no interest in investing in separating and processing rare earths on Brazilian territory, since it already controls the technology and has its own abundant supply.
A billion-dollar announcement hours earlier
The remarks carried extra weight because of an announcement made just hours before: the US Department of Defense committed US$ 750 million (roughly R$ 3.8 billion) to the vehicle that will purchase mixed rare earth carbonate from mining company Serra Verde, in the state of Goias. That brings the total planned investment package for the Center-West project to US$ 1.5 billion (about R$ 7.7 billion), including US$ 300 million in advance purchase contracts from the Defense Logistics Agency and US$ 500 million in bank debt.
The offtake agreement, the term for a guaranteed purchase of future production, runs fifteen years and sets a price floor for neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, critical minerals whose extraction and processing chain is today concentrated mostly in China. Serra Verde is the only rare earth mine currently operating in Brazil, and its output had until now been tied up in ten-year contracts with Chinese processors, according to the Folha report.
Silveira's remarks in Belo Horizonte confirm a positioning the Brazilian government has been signaling for some time: trying to establish itself as an alternative supplier in a mineral supply chain still dominated by China, at a moment when Washington is looking to cut its dependence on its Asian rival. This account is based on reporting by Folha de S.Paulo; other outlets had not independently confirmed the details of the minister's remarks at the time of this publication.