Spencer Kimball, reporting for CNBC one week ago:

The Defense Department will become the largest shareholder in rare earth miner MP Materials after agreeing to buy $400 million of its preferred stock, the company said Thursday.

MP Materials owns the only operational rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California, about 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Proceeds from the Pentagon investment will be used to expand MP’s rare earths processing capacity and magnet production, the company said. Shares of MP Materials soared about 50% to close at $45.23. Its market capitalization grew to $7.4 billion, an increase of about $2.5 billion from the previous trading session. [...]

MP Materials CEO James Litinsky described the Pentagon investment as a public-private partnership that will speed the buildout of an end-to-end rare earth magnet supply chain in the U.S.

“I want to be very clear, this is not a nationalization,” Litinsky told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday. “We remain a thriving public company. We now have a great new partner in our economically largest shareholder, DoD, but we still control our company. We control our destiny. We’re shareholder driven.” U.S. miners are facing a unique threat from “Chinese mercantilism,” Litinsky said. The Pentagon investment in MP could serve as a model for similar deals with other U.S. companies, the CEO said.

This news caught my eye when Taegan Goddard linked to it from Political Wire yesterday (quipping, “I’m old enough to remember when this was called ‘socialism’”), because yesterday MP Materials landed a $500 million deal from Apple. Apple Newsroom:

Today Apple announced a new commitment of $500 million with MP Materials, the only fully integrated rare earth producer in the United States. With this multiyear deal, Apple is committed to buying American-made rare earth magnets developed at MP Materials’ flagship Independence facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The two companies will also work together to establish a cutting-edge rare earth recycling line in Mountain Pass, California, and develop novel magnet materials and innovative processing technologies to enhance magnet performance. The commitment is part of Apple’s pledge to spend more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, and builds on the company’s long history of investment in American innovation, advanced manufacturing, and next-generation recycling technologies. [...]

When complete, the new recycling facility in Mountain Pass, California will enable MP Materials to take in recycled rare earth feedstock — including material from used electronics and post-industrial scrap — and reprocess it for use in Apple products. For nearly five years, Apple and MP Materials have been piloting advanced recycling technology that enables recycled rare earth magnets to be processed into material that meets Apple’s exacting standards for performance and design. The companies will continue to innovate together to improve magnet production, as well as end-of-life recovery.

Apple pioneered the use of recycled rare earth elements in consumer electronics, first introducing them in the Taptic Engine of iPhone 11 in 2019. Today, nearly all magnets across Apple devices are made with 100 percent recycled rare earth elements.

The timing of these two announcements could be purely coincidental, but I can’t help but wonder if both moves were fueled by concerns about China cornering the market on rare earth magnets. Conversely, I wonder if this deal (and promotion of it) from Apple is aimed just to placate the Trump administration. A $500 million commitment is surely a big deal for MP Materials. It’s not that big a deal for Apple. What makes it interesting is that it’s with an American company.