USA Rare Earth CEO Says US is in ‘Early Innings’ of Independence

USA Rare Earth Inc.’s $2.8 billion acquisition of Brazil’s Serra Verde Group is a step toward US independence from China for rare earth metals, said Chief Executive Officer Barbara Humpton.

“We’re at the very early innings of this,” Humpton said Wednesday on the weekly Bloomberg Deals show.

“China set this as an objective decades ago,” Humpton said. “They declared the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths and now we’ve seen how that monopoly has been used for statecraft.”

USA Rare Earth is paying $300 million in cash and issuing about 126.8 million shares to buy ...