Brazil, India Sign Memorandum of Understanding to Boost Mining Cooperation
Does the Brazil-India partnership break China's rare earth dominance or does cooperation with Beijing remain best?
Above: Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Feb. 21. Image credit: Sondeep Shankar/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty Images
The Spin
Anti-China narrative
Brazil and India's massive rare earth reserves directly challenges China's stranglehold on critical minerals. As Beijing's export restrictions last April exposed the vulnerability of relying on Chinese processing, this new partnership is essential for building an independent supply chain that bypasses Chinese facilities entirely.
Pro-China narrative
China has actively supported that critical mineral and rare earth supply chains must remain highly internationalized as they currently are, never imposing blanket bans on their exports. Instead of attempting to rebuild supply chains from the scratch without China, all nations should focus on cooperating with China.
