BY EMMANUEL OGBONNA
Greenland’s vast icy landscape holds significant deposits of rare earth elements that are critical to modern technology, but decades of effort have shown just how difficult it would be to turn that geological promise into a reliable source of supply. Despite renewed interest from President Donald Trump, who has floated the idea of taking control of the Arctic island as part of a strategy to weaken China’s dominance over rare earths, the fundamental obstacles to mining there remain as formidable as ever.
Rare earth elements are essential components in products ranging from electric vehicles and wind turbines to advanced weapons systems and consumer electronics. China currently controls the overwhelming majority of global production and processing, a position it has leveraged in recent years by tightening export controls. Those moves gained new urgency for Washington after the United States imposed sweeping tariffs last spring, prompting Beijing to restrict access to key materials.
Trump has made reducing U.S. dependence on China a central priority of his economic and national security agenda. His administration has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into rare earth projects, taken equity stakes in several companies and sought supply chains beyond China. Against that backdrop, Trump has revived his long-standing fascination with Greenland, publicly suggesting that U.S. control of the island could help solve America’s rare earth problem.
“We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday, a remark that underscored both his determination and the controversy surrounding the idea.
Yet even if political hurdles were somehow cleared, Greenland’s rare earth resources are unlikely to deliver meaningful supplies anytime soon. While the island is believed to hold roughly 1.5 million tons of rare earths locked in rock, most projects remain at an early exploratory stage. No commercial mine has yet been built, and industry experts caution that years — or even decades — could pass before production becomes viable, if it ever does.
Many analysts argue that Trump’s interest in Greenland is driven less by mining prospects than by broader strategic concerns. The Arctic is becoming an arena of growing competition as climate change opens new shipping routes and access to resources, drawing increased attention from both Russia and China. From that perspective, Greenland’s location may matter more than its minerals.
“The fixation on Greenland has always been more about geopolitical posturing — a military-strategic interest and stock-promotion narrative — than a realistic supply solution for the tech sector,” said Tracy Hughes, founder and executive director of the Critical Minerals Institute. “The hype far outstrips the hard science and economics behind these critical minerals.”
Trump echoed those concerns at the White House, warning that the United States could not allow rivals to expand their influence on the island. “We don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland,” he said. “If we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor.”
The physical realities of mining in Greenland, however, pose immense challenges. Infrastructure is minimal, even in the more populated southern regions. There are few roads, no railways and limited ports, meaning any mining operation would need to build most of its logistics network from scratch. Electricity would have to be generated locally, and skilled workers would need to be brought in from abroad.
“The main challenge is, of course, the remoteness,” said Diogo Rosa, an economic geology researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. “Any mining venture would have to create access, power generation and manpower almost entirely on its own.”
Environmental concerns add another layer of complexity. Greenland is seeking to expand its tourism industry, and large-scale mining could threaten fragile Arctic ecosystems. Extracting rare earths typically requires toxic chemicals to separate the minerals from surrounding rock, a process that carries a high risk of pollution. In many cases, rare earth deposits are also found alongside radioactive uranium, increasing both environmental and political sensitivities.
Beyond the climate and environmental risks, Greenland’s geology itself is problematic. Many of the island’s rare earths are embedded in a mineral called eudialyte, from which no one has yet developed a consistently profitable extraction process. Elsewhere in the world, rare earths are often found in carbonatite formations, where proven mining and processing methods already exist.
“If we’re in a race for critical minerals, we should be focusing on resources that can get to market most easily,” said David Abraham, a longtime rare earths expert and author of “The Elements of Power.”
Despite these realities, speculation around Greenland projects can still move markets. Shares of Critical Metals more than doubled this week after the company announced plans to build a pilot plant on the island later this year. Still, it and more than a dozen other firms exploring Greenland’s deposits remain far from constructing a full-scale mine and would need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to do so.
The economics of rare earths are notoriously unforgiving. Even advanced projects can struggle to turn a profit, especially when China increases supply to drive down prices — a tactic it has used repeatedly to squeeze out competitors. Adding to the challenge, most rare earths still must be processed in China, limiting the effectiveness of new mining ventures elsewhere.
The United States is now racing to diversify supply during a temporary one-year reprieve from even tighter Chinese restrictions, which Trump said President Xi Jinping agreed to last October. But many existing producers and manufacturers around the world can deliver material far sooner than any Greenland project, which Trump has controversially suggested could be acquired by force if Denmark refuses to sell.
“Everybody’s been running to get to the endpoint,” said Ian Lange, an economics professor at the Colorado School of Mines who studies rare earth markets. “If you go to Greenland, it’s like you’re going back to the beginning.”
Industry leaders increasingly argue that Washington would be better served by supporting projects that are already well advanced, particularly in the United States and allied countries such as Australia. The U.S. government has invested in MP Materials, which operates the country’s only active rare earth mine, as well as in lithium producers and companies that recycle rare earths from used batteries and electronics.
Scott Dunn, chief executive of Noveon Magnetics, said those investments offer a more realistic path to reducing China’s leverage, even if progress is slow. His company already produces more than 2,000 metric tons of magnets each year at a Texas plant using materials sourced outside China.
“There are very few players with a proven track record of delivering,” Dunn said. “If you’re the U.S. government, that’s where you should start — because changing the math quickly is extremely hard when more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earths still come from China.”
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