It seems that everyone was making deals in Washington this week with countries including the UAE, the UK, Argentina and the Philippines each issuing separate announcements that they had signed deals with the United States to secure the supply and processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths during this week's meetings in Washington.

Amidst all of this dealmaking, the New York Times today has an opinion piece on the global rush to secure rare earths, pointing out that they're actually not so rare. The piece argues that the United States should not only increase production at its existing mines, but also build out domestic capacity for processing critical minerals while also focusing on recycling rare earths from mine waste and through other techniques.

The USGS will later today release its annual Mineral Commodity Summaries report, which gives us a glimpse each year into just how import reliant US supply chains are on foreign suppliers for the minerals we need. Last year's report found that the US was 100 percent import reliant for 15 minerals and more than one-half import reliant for 46 non-fuel minerals. We'll see if the focus on building up our supply chains with domestic product has put a dent in those numbers this year.